Drunken Bungle Whore

There was a report on TV this morning about overweight kids and they wheeled out the usual dieticians blaming fast food advertising - but no one mentioned exercise.

When I think back to when I was growing up in the 70's we didn't have fast food - but neither were we partiularly well informed about a 'healthy diet'. We ate fatty meat and drank full cream milk - Channel Island stuff if we were lucky! We crammed in as many sweets as we could get away with and avoided fruit and veg in the same way and self respecting kid would.

The difference was we played outside all the time - probably because it was safer (less cars and wierdos) and also because there were fewer alternatives (wet afternoons with Operation, Frustration and Connect 4....)

Do kids not get to do sport at school? Is there no food education in school? One of the dieticians mentioned they had to run cooking classes for parents as some didn't even know how to peel a carrot - that's quite scary!

One of their argments is that overweight kids turn into overweight adults - is that necessarily the case - isn't it a bit over simplified? There were very few overweight kids at my school - so why are there so many overweight adults my age? Was anyone on here an overweight kid? Is it something that stayed with you into adulthood or not?

Just curious about other peoples thoughts/ experiences.

555wrx

Im turning into a fat Bast, now in my 30's, spend most of my time sat in an office at a desk, only exercise I get is at weekends when walking between pubs,or when taking the kids out for a walk. IMO it is lack of exercise that makes fatty kids.
Now shut up and stop bothering me.......as if there isnt enough time for me to eat cream cakes between meals.

boxst

David Lock

I just top and tail carrots - bit of roughage never did any harm

Yes it's mostly lack of excercise IMHO. I cycled 3 miles to school everyday but I wouldn't let my kids do that because of huge increase in traffic. Always makes me wince when I read on here "good through the twisties" - yep those are the ones with kids just around the blind corner......... DL

Brendan Hughes

Watched a documentary about TV. Fascinating fact - watching TV, you burn LESS calories than doing NOTHING AT ALL. Reason - doing nothing, you fidget. Watching TV, you don't fidget.

Jye

I think you're meant to peel carrots because of the high levels of nitrates used to grow them these days. Something to do with having to use more fertilisers due the the sandy soils (leaching etc) required to grow the nice straight carrots everyone wants. Carrots are one of the veggies I buy organic where poss, cos I'm too lazy to peel them for juicing etc

Jye

Another interesting proggie last night put down obesity as being caused by a virus. The statistics were really quite convincing. A diagram was shown where the levels of obesity in the US over the past decade moved from the east coast to the west coast of the US in a very virus like spread pattern.

ajm

It would be interesting to see if new branches of McDonalds spread in a similar fashion!

Spring Heeled Jack

Surprisingly, the assumption that behind every bush lurkes a child raper is also a myth.

Jye

My thoughts exactly ajm

imlach

There were less cars agreed, but less wierdos? No chance. Same level as before. People are just more paranoid now. Unjustified really. More chance of getting run over by a bus probably.

Tiggs

Its a zillion times safer for kids now that at any other time in history.

alwong

Kids have got lazier compared to 20-30 yeas ago. Technology has evolved so much that the entertainment is on a games console instead of outside.

555wrx

Quite right, everybody knows that you will either find a police officer with a radar gun, or a new gatso springing up.

Brendan Hughes

I can see it now - "Speed cameras and radar traps make your children safer - they keep the paedos off the streets!"

Genius!

Tiggs

they may "act" lazier but they arent lazier people...given the chance they will play outside just like 20 years ago....my kids do sports after school 4 times a week and are either in the garden or in the feild behind the garden other times playing. If i didnt bother with the sports or kept them indoors they'd watch TV all day and be called "lazy"

my 8 year old has been jogging to the post box for me each day (i work from home and have lots of post each day)...shes done this for about the last year or so.......much to the horror of other parents who seem to belive that between my house and the post box (5 min walk) there are a multitude of rapists and "look at me puppies" types lurking about!

Abdabz

When I was a very small boy very small boys talked to me. Now that we've grown up together we're fatter now than when we're three. Thats the price that we all pay all that excercise done for nothing. I can tell you I like french fries I guess thats why my pants are so wide.
I used to think that the day would never come, when my guts would be touching my fat bum. My chunky bum is impossible to wipe, coz my blubber obstructs my down pipe. I used to think that the day would never come when my life would depend on feeding my tum...

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

As a person with both parents who are PE teachers the way they have cut PE from the timetable and are now getting rid of competitive sport it's quite easy to see where the problem lies. Kids do no exercise at school anymore. Add in the claims culture and where we used to play football ever chance we got in the playground and accepted the occasional cut hands or bloody knees now the schools are too scared to let this happen for fear of being sued.

Solution...

Get rid of half the namby pamby subjects they now have that mean nothing! I know I would rather my kids (If I had some) do PE (where they play team games thus learning how to work with each other, how to win and more importantly how to accept defeat etc. ) then having RE which is a personal thing IMHO and is less and less important to people.

Sith

RE Mcdonalds and other fast food.

You can't really blame the fast food stores, they are a business making money. Their advertising is going to be biased to make all the produce look great and tasty.

What has happened is people now munch far more fast food. The individual can decide wether to eat fast food You are not forced at gun point into McD's. You have the choice, parents have the choice, kids have the choice. You can easily walk past the Mcd's and into Boot's, Subway, Pret, Benjy's or any other amount of sandwich shops.

People are yet again looking to blame someone else for their problems rather than take ownership of the problem and say, 'You know what, I eat too much junk food. I better stop'.
Nowadays it's far more appealing to say 'It was the nasty clown from Mcd's, he made me do it, he forced me to eat it with his catchy slogan and smiley face'.

Leslie

I think the point about sport is very valid. we used to eat all those kinds of food mentioned but it was a good balanced diet and no junk food. I also believe that modern processed foods are packed with all kinds of preservatives, colourings, artificial flavourings etc. which are no good at all for us.

We had compulsory sport twice a week, it was rightfully considered as an essential part of our education. Yes there were a few fatties but mostly down to inherted genes I think.

These days the schools are selling off the playing fields and this PC rubbish about stopping competitive sport is yet another stupidity which is dragging the country and in this case our children into a regrettable situation.

The Nation's health is in real danger.

Les

ajm

Looking at it another way.... at least a generation of early heart attacks will make a bit more room on this crowded little island. If everyone lived until 100 we would be in real trouble!

davegtt

u know what I blame, I blame giving women the right to have a right, I mean a career woman? forget it, keep them locked int he kitchen like the gud ole days then they'll haveto cook a decent meal day in day out. then maccy dees wont be as popular as mum and dad coming home from work both to knackered to fart about cooking. lets go to maccy dees.

Have I got a point or what?

Drunken Bungle Whore

Just had an icky thought - bearing in mind the laws of physics (the part about matter and energy not being created or destryed - just changing form) - what would happen if everyone who was over weight dieted down to their target weight - what would all the fat become....?


Also - I don't think our parents needed to be as well educated about food as we need to be now. My mum didn't teach me anything about diet or nutrition - and she still understands very little about it all - but as pretty much all the food back then was fresh and there was very little in the way of fast food it didn't really matter. Is that why a lot of parents today are pretty clueless?

As for the point made about McDonalds not holding a gun to our heads - fair enough, if you happen to be a rational adult. The problem is that something like 60% of ads in kids programmes are for a fast food of some sort. When our parents backs were turned we headed for the sweet shop for a few sweets - these days kids are eating entire extra meals without their parents knowing.

Jye

Yeah, but remember, the ban for smoking in pubs will let us all live till 100 np

Brendan Hughes

Fertilizer for your nice organic carrots and letti

Tiggs

Doing PE twice a week was not what kept kids "un-fat"....my kids tear around the playground everyday....a few extra PE lessons would make very little difference to the amount of school based exercise they got....its a problem but lack of PE isnt the main problem.

T

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Bigger picture.... They learn team sports at school etc. enjoy them, want to join a local team and play at night/weekends etc. I used to love PE especially the 90 minute lesson we had where you could get a good game going etc. one lesson is useless when the kids have to get changed, organised into groups etc. They just see it as quite pointless and a pain hence they ignore the chance to play sport outside of school hours.

I would also add that my mother used to run teams almost every night after school. driving the kids to matches in a minibus etc. Then they said they couldn't afford to keep the minibus and if they wanted to organise after hours matches etc they would have to hire a minibus out of the PE budget. In order to do this thought my mum would have to go pick up the minibus from the hire place, go to the match, bring the kids back then drive the minibus back to the hire place. Not what you want to be doing in winter when you have a husband home from work and kids of your own to look after. In the end she got fed up of it and only does it occasionally. As a result it's the kids who suffer.

Lum

I blame the government.
Under the tories, every class in every school was issued one fat kid, one asthmatic kid and one kid with glasses. This policy was to ensure that the rest of the kids were not picked last in PE, and to ensure that the fat kid was the object of ridicule in every moment of every school day, thus discouraging the other kids from becoming fat.

Now that Labour have scrapped this fine policy, PE is less popular because anyone could be picked last and then the school will be sued for the psychological trauma, as a result of this kids have gotten fatter and the government have had to increase the fat kid per class quota to accomodate, which in turn encourages more kids to become fat, and allows them to gang up against all the people who take the **** out of them for being fatties, so yet anothr discouragement has been removed.

Thanks Tony.

SiPie

The answer is simple and it’s all down to the country becoming overly politically correct

Previous example:

Fat kid at school gets the **** ripped out of him for eating all the pies.

So…. fat kid then starts chasing his abusers around the playground and loses some chubbiness in the process or alternatively embarks on a diet/exercise programme in a bid to loose his excess and avoid the abuse.

Current day example:

Fat kid doesn’t get any abuse as his parents will probably sue the school for allowing kids to take the **** out of him , therefore he embarks on no playground chases and has zero incentive to do any chubby chopping.



edited as similar slant to post above