Childhood obesity

[Emma1979]

i often see at the shopping centre an entire obese family plodding along, morbidly obese mum and dad up front and a couple of huge kids tagging behind them... it is just so sad.... im not saying all obese parents have obese children, but i definitely notice alot of obesity being 'passed down' through the generations.... i think it has a lot to do with education.... some people have not got a clue (obviously)...

i don't have a clue about a realistic solution, the situation is completely overwhelming, although the solution is very basic - eat less, move more.... people have to actually want to change their lifestyle.... if everyone stopped eating anything that came in a packet i think that would be a start, but to be honest i'm not sure a lot of people have it in them to want to change.... it can't solely be about education, there has to be the desire to change.

[sushee]

i often see at the shopping centre an entire obese family plodding along, morbidly obese mum and dad up front and a couple of huge kids tagging behind them... it is just so sad.... im not saying all obese parents have obese children, but i definitely notice alot of obesity being 'passed down' through the generations....

I remember an overweight friend of mine once telling me how she noticed how people watched everything she ate. I think the same is at work here: we notice the obese family and assume the obese parents are passing their 'bad eating habits' to their kids. But if we saw a thin parent with a big kid, we don't attribute that sort of 'vice' to the parent.

Weight seems to the one of the few things that people are still allowed to openly discrimate against. I can honestly say that because I often am aware of obesity-related bias, and because of my psych studies where they talk about 'confirmation bias' (where people specifically look for examples in their surroundings to support their prejudices or bias) I specifically 'people watch' with that in mind all day everyday and know for a fact that an entire overweight family is far less common than people make out. You are JUST AS LIKELY to see overweight parents with thin kids, or thin parents with overweight kids.

Except when you've got it in your head that fat parents=fat kids, those families are the ones you tend to remember time and time again.

[Emma1979]

we notice the obese family and assume the obese parents are passing their 'bad eating habits' to their kids. But if we saw a thin parent with a big kid, we don't attribute that sort of 'vice' to the parent.

yes i would assume the obese parents are passing their bad eating habits or poor lifestyle choices etc down to their growingly obese kids - i think its a fair assumption? however if i saw a more normal sized parent with an overweight kid, i would still have the same assumption of the parent (some people can be couch potatoes and live on fried food and still have a great metabolism).... what i'm try to say is i put the parents at fault if their kids are unhealthily overweight...

i guess i notice the entire fat families because it seems to be so much more severe (their obesity)

[Lulu]

But if we saw a thin parent with a big kid, we don't attribute that sort of 'vice' to the parent.

If I see an obese child, I tend to look at the parents, no matter what size and think they are just not feeding their kid properly.

My SDS was obese, his mother rail thin. He ate well but far too much, he was also allowed to eat/drink whatever he liked. 1.5 litres of Coke a day (at the age of 9), 3 vanilla slices for dessert on top of a man sized meal.

He was always puffed out, tired and didn't sleep well. He was always sick and it sucked. It took exH having to talk to the mother very seriously and he took him for an hour walk 3 times a week. It took 2 years but he feels so much better and takes great control over his own diet. He had withdrawal headaches from the coke for a while too...

[sushee]

wow, Lulu. I think it's makes my point though, that children can be taught bad habits from a parent of any weight. My kids didn't have coke or sweets or junk when they were young, but my sister's kids did, all the time. Yet if we walked out together, there would be an immediate assumption that not only do I eat badly, but that I must be the parent who feeds her kids badly too. I've had her buying her 2yo a chupachup, and despite the fact she was paying, the lady at the counter looked at me and said that kids that young shouldn't have so much sugar. Aside the fact that the old biddy should have minded her own business, it displays a prejudice that I know exists everywhere. I'm not the only one to have been a recipient.

In fact weight prejudice is so ingrained that in studies, they have shown that just by 'widening' people on TV screens, that viewers immediately attribute negative characteristics to them, such as being less trustworthy, or more malicious.

[Phteven]

Whilst I think that there is scope for a discussion about childhood obesity and what we can do about it I don't think that it will occur in this thread. In fact I can't see that anything very constructive can come of it because it has already become quite arguementative.
With this in mind I am closing the thread now rather than after more members have offended and/or been offended.

[Beach Mama]

Mmmm tricky one - who doesn't occasionally go to the food court and indulge in some oh so good maccas chips and yes I might have slipped my daughter a few chips on occasion. Thing is, the rest of the time she eats a wonderfully balanced and healthy diet as we can give her, and as she grows up, we hope to instil in her that moderation and eating a well balanced and healthy variety of foods is just life. Occasionally indulging in junk is a choice you can make as long as it's not your way of life.

Having said all that, there are times that I wonder what people think and realise that my own judgments in the past were a bit the similar, now I've realised that you can't judge a whole family, overweight or not by what you see on one occasion in a food court.

As a teacher, yes there are many kids who do not eat well, and whose parents simply do not know or understand what healthy eating is, but one of the even larger issues to me is inacitivty of these kids. We do something called K-A -Day, the kids run(or walk) 2 laps of the school on most days. Some of the kids will be huffing and puffing after running 100 metres and will have to walk the rest of the way...Where we used to run and ride our bikes, shoot hoops, play chasey etc. these kids are much more inactive due to computers, TV's etc... Another teacher and I were also commenting just recently on how many of our kids also come in from their run and tell us they don't feel well, that they are breathing too fast and think something is wrong!!!! They don't realise that it is normal to feel that way when you do exercise.

Anyway I'm going to slink off my soapbox too now and say that it is way too big an issue to judge over what is potentially an isolated incident, however, obesity in children is definately a big one and the answer isn't so simple.