So just HOW should 'the government' tackle obesity etc...??

Or two ounces of dolly mixture? (yum)

Here you are bells
www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/wonka-small-gobstoppers-3-pack-250358158

5g total carbohydrate in 3 small gobstoppers.
A sugar cube weighs 4g.

Ours were HUGE!

Hmmm! Some disagreement here. It appears it depends on the brand and size of the gobstopper:
www.sparkpeople.com/calories-in.asp?food=gobstoppers

Wonka gobstoppers don't look very big...

www.livestrong.com/article/352620-gobstoppers-nutrition/

I don't think Willy Wonka had a lot to do with ours. TBH.

I think the whole country's gone mad. Starting with Public Health England.

www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=256179436

Tesco says a quarter of an 85g pack of Tesco dolly mixtures contains 19g sugar, as if anyone would just eat a quarter of the packet.

So 21g dolly mixtures contains 19g sugar approx

So 2oz dolly mixtures (56g) would contain 50g sugar.

The recommended daily allowance of sugar has just been reduced from 40g/day to 25g/day for adults.Presumably the allowance for children is rather less.

Hope that helps

They're not gobstoppers (in the Livestrong pic)! You could still talk with one six of those in your mouth.

Well... I stayed skinny.

Another problem I think happens in pregnancy. In other cultures pregnant women carry babies/harvests/water and work until they give birth

Here, pregnant women are afraid to exercise with a big market in "antenatal exercise classes" which just perpetuate the myth that pregnant women can't/shouldn't exercise normally

Basically pregnant women are told "you don't know what you're doing" - don't exercise unless it's at an "anti natal" class once a week with someone telling you what to do, don't eat normally, just put your feet up until you're as physically un-ready for the marathon of labour as you possibly could be, then let the doctors take over.

Another "culture" story about being pregnant in the UK: when pregnant with one of my girls I was bringing packed lunches to where I worked. Examples of similar packed lunches to what I was bringing:
- Big pot of humous with either carrot and corriander and a bit of lemon mixed in or crudites and about 5 oat cakes. Herb tea. Some fruit
- Smoked salmon and avocado and oat cakes or ryvita (big portions, about 3 heaped high - brought separately and assembled at work). Fruit juice, dried mango
- A whole chicken leg, some beetroot, fruit, herb tea

^ that sort of thing. Anyway, a big bunch of women at my work pretty much tried to stage an "intervention" telling me that I was selfish and vein to "diet" when pregnant! And it was bad for the baby to "diet" when pregnant.

I wasn't "dieting". I was having big portions and not counting anything, I just turned down the staff room cakes/biscuits and ate healthy food instead. I did it because I had to survive a pregnancy with enough energy to run after a toddler, and eating cake makes me feel tired and sluggish. I didn't do it to get "thin" and I wasn't restricting my portions enough to lose weight anyway (I wasn't restricting my portions at all)

So. Healthy food choices = dieting, and pregnant women shouldn't "diet"…. is what I learnt!

One of the biggest problems in schools is the lack of discipline and allowing children to do as they please, if they dont want to take part in P.E they just refuse and there is nothing a teacher can do.
As much as i hate tax, i cant see any other way of getting people to eat less junk, just today i saw 24 cans of fizzy pop in a supermarket for £2.99, this stuff is supposed to be a treat not a young persons usual drink.
Here in Scotland you can buy a brekkie box which is a pizza box overflowing with bacon, sausages,eggs, potato scones,hash browns and blackpuddings with a fizzy drink to wash it down with for £6, this is madness.

They can refuse to do PE???

I think if any of had tried that we'd have been expelled!

us

Of course they can't refuse. They just lurk in the PE cupboard or pretend they're running after the ball, like I used to do.......

Grannypiper, do you not think that the solution is not to make more stuff expensive as you suggest, but rather to make healthy things/health living cheaper and more accessible! Tax free whole foods, tax free sports kit - just imagine!

I do not believe that limiting choice is going to make people healthier and happier, give people more access to more healthy choices and people will be healthier and happier

DH and I were saying only the other day, that when we were kids, going for a family swim was a cheapo "treat", it's really pricey now. It's not unusual for one term of sports or dance to cost around £100. Never mind that after a LONG school day sitting at a desk, they can't give 100% at their extra curricular activites. Tax us further? Limit our choices of how we can "treat" our family further? hmmm

Also you mentioned that people shouldn't have the choice to opt out of PE (many do for valid reasons such as hyper mobility or sensory issues), but consider what would happen if people had MORE choice in PE (I know I know never happen because of choice, but just consider if choice is increased not reduced), and instead of HAVING to do athletics or gymnastics whether you liked it or not, you could chose team sport, dance or yoga - I bet you wouldn't have to twist so many arms to get involved if they could chose an activity that suited them!

More choice & more access & more time = healthier happier society
More tax, less autonomy, less choice = not so much

A lot of things that my not very well off parents could do with me (in terms of ACTIVE treats) are now out of our reach as on paper "Better" earning professionals than them. Yes we have more choice on the supermarket shelves, but on the flip side, we have very limited time and a lot of healthier persuits are becoming luxuries (Sunday isn't a family day any more due to 7 day/weeks working being the norm, so a weekly ritual of a family walk after a home cooked sunday lunch isn't the option it was when I was a kid)

Another thought:

Council run gyms/fitness/sports centres have to be "profitable"

Now I know that there are other (free) outdoorsey ways to exercise, but council gyms offer a cheap way to try lots of activities.. anyway…

The nearest council run gym to me is a drive away (irony!). There used to be one in walking distance ( I live in a built up area so you would actually expect this sort of service in walking distance) but it wasn't turning a profit (or breaking even or whatever it is that council gyms are under pressure to do) so was closed.

However wasn't that a false economy? imagine if the part of the council who ran the gym spoke to the primary health care providers in the area? The financial "loss" to the area in terms of healthcare costs surely out weighs the slight loss the council gym was making?

@grannypiper

That is just not true. When was the last time you supervised a PE lesson?

I'm not insured to take PE lessons, but I've covered many as a supply teacher as the teacher's 'assistant'. As a matter of course, PE teachers search changing rooms before locking the doors at the start of a lesson. This was usually my 'job'. The absence of a PE teacher meant that one teacher usually doubled up two classes, but there needed to be another adult present.

@notan

I did supply in one school, where the older pupils (who thought PE wasn't cool) were allowed to use a Wii instead of traditional games. They were surprisingly sweaty and red faced after an hour's lesson.

daphnedill# last time i supervised a P.E session was 3 and a half years ago. Sending teenagers to remove because they refuse to get changed is of no help, after school or lunchtime detention is pointless so there really isn't much left to make a stroppy teenage girl take part but if you know a way please please let me know.

DD I asked for a Wii for Christmas and a 'Just Dance' disc to go with it.

Great exercise. To think we used to go out and dance for hours on a Saturday night....and now after one session of 'Who let the Dogs Out' in clutching my chest and wheezing

Can thoroughly recommend. It's fun, you can do 5 minutes or 50 15, it's addictive (DH had a go and I nearly wet myself watching him dance to Rednex 'Cotton Eye Joe!!) and you can do it in your own front room with the curtains drawn.

@grannypiper,

Having good interpersoanl skills helps.

@Anya

I definitely recommend drawing the curtains I think they're great. I acquired quite an old version when my son went to uni. The cats look at me with a bemused expression.

I can imagine

Seriously any GNetters who want to get a bit fitter but would rather not make an exhibition of themselves at an exercise class, get a Wii Dance disc. You just have to mirror the moves on the TV screen and you can choose your music. I can boast getting 8430 points for Who Let the Dogs Out DD [proud emoji]

Both my children were born in the early 1970s and my memories of pregnancy are that there was constant advice, both from my GP, and in all the literature I was showered with, that my pregnancy weight gain should be limited to 2 stone and there was constant advice NOT to eat for two, as well as to keep active. Mothercare at the time had an excellent range of maternity swimming costumes, which I bought and used a lot. I worked until 6 weeks before DS was due, this was not unusual.

I do not remember many women ending up overweight after pregnancy. Most were back to normal weight within weeks.