Obesity and fast food - is there no hope?

"... I can't see that I have any reason to disapprove"

Who exactly was seeking your approval or otherwise?

absent. I think you do it on purpose. . No one sounds that pompous by accident.

I'm not sure what your comment implies jingl. If children – and, for that matter, adults – sit down to eat and do not do other things at the same time, they are far more likely to recognise the body's signal that says "replete" and respond by ceasing to eat. If, however, their attention is elsewhere and, rather than paying attention to what they are eating, they are simply shovelling in fuel, over-eating becomes more likely.

'Oh things were never like this in OUR day!'

Yes indeed, crun. Succinctly put, though I was rather, ahem, "getting at" what jings used to call the stuffed-shirtiness of some gransnet posts as well

Good old absent. Never changes!

As I have no idea what else the child eats during the rest of the day, let alone the rest of the week, I can't see that I have any reason to disapprove. However, I do think children should sit down to eat and not run around.

My grandson is allowed a Happy Meal now and then and all he seems to care about is the free toy that comes with it! He is slim [thin actually] and healthy, so nothing wrong with some fast food now and again. If children are virtually living on them, that's another matter.

crun

Half the punters on Secret Eaters are foodies who cook everything from scratch, but they don't seem to realise that the reasons why they are fat are:

1) They eat healthy food as well as the chocolate and cream cakes, rather than instead of them.
2) They think that healthy food is about who cooks it rather than what it contains.
3) They don't read the labels.

Ben Goldacre was on the telly the other week saying that there is no such thing as an unhealthy meal, only an unhealthy diet, which seems pretty much what thatbags is getting at.

This made I larf.

Oh, sorry teetime, I hadn't read your update! Whoops!

However, I do not withdraw my coments about judgmentalism. That is what many posts on this thread seemed to me to be full of.

I didn't mean to sound aggressive. What worries me is what I see as a kind of Puritanism than seeps into so many subjects nowadays. Why are we so critical of people's food choices? I presume the answer is "for the good of their health", but what about the freedom to choose one's own poison? I don't have statistics but it does appear from what I see and hear in news media that a lot of people, probably a majority, do like eating McD fries. Why sholdn't they? Why are we grans, among others, so vociferous in our disapproval of a mum giving her child a Happy Meal when actually that is all we know about the situation. We know nothing about why the mum brought her child to the slimming club. We know nothing about how much of the meal the child ate that day, and nothing about how often that child is given a Happy Meal to eat.

And yet we (some of us) appear to judge such people negatively. I think that is over the top and unjustified. So, if my posts seem aggressive it is only the 'aggression' of standing up for someone who is not in a position to stand up for herself, and whose story we don't even know enoigh about to making such judgments in the first place.

I guess I'm saying back off with the judgmentalism. There seems to be a fair bit of it on GN at the moment. Perhaps I'll write a book called The Disapproving Grannies.

tee time 're your post of 16:01 - that's what I thought you meant - the incongruity. But then - a private alcohol rehab is about to be opened near where I live - next to a pub!

I suppose you have to be able to withstand temptation.

That post of yours was very aggressive Bags - did you mean it to sound like that?

What on earth are you getting your knickers in a twist about thatbags? You are the one making assumptions....I was merely pointing out a fact ie the fact that there was insufficient vitamins and other nutrients in that Happy Meal pro rats.

Is that judgemental?

At least the little girl ran around while she was eating. Burnt up all the calories you see!

OO I'm glad I mentioned this!! So here we are. Yes she did eat it all but it was chicken nuggets not a burger and chips and sauce and she ran round the room while she ate it. Yes its a regular occurrence according to her Mum 'she loves her MaccyD's'. No she didn't want a babysitter she prefers to bring her with her. I just thought it was all a bit incongruous to be sitting there all worrying about weight and swapping SW recipes at the same time as the room smelt of chips and chicken nuggets. Most of the others Mums bring something like a banana for their child and often have something themselves after weigh in like a SW cereal bar as they are hungry having starved all day. Several of them go to MacDs or the fish and chip shop together after weigh in for what is known as treat night its just that they don't do it in front of the SW organiser who tells them how much this may slow down their weight loss. I usually go home to a large glass of wine and whatever we would be having for dinner it just happened to be cold chicken salad last night. I thought I smelt of chips!!!

It's because we can only judge on what OP says, and I suspect I jumped to a possibility incorrect conclusion and then generalised wildly , sorry!

loopylou have you really never taken a cookery book to bed for your bedtime reading?!

Not even a nice new one?

They probably get plenty of vits, calcium, iron etc in their bowl of breakfast cereal.

Nothing wrong with having half your calories on your main meal.

What is wrong with any of this? choices in a Happy Meal

Carry on judging something about which you have a very small percentage of information, why don't you, anya? You are making assumptions. The Happy Meal in question might have been a special treat. We don't know.

Not much in the way of nutritional value if the kid is eating 50% of its daily allowance and that only has 6% of it's Vit A, 3% Vit C, 15% iron and 20% calcium.

But I expect the remain 50% of its calories were packed full of the missing nutrients in home made, vitamin and mineral rich food

I think that wanting to keep a child quiet during a class one attends is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do. Maybe the woman in question couldn't get a babysitter.

Did the child eat all of the Happy Meal. That's of significance too. Is that known? My guess is no. So why don't we stop judging?

You seem to be agreeing with me that it's quantity that matters where weight is a concern, nelliem — the how much rather than the what.