Obesity linked to poverty

Chewbacca

^My observation is that it is young women who are mostly overweight/ obese^

The official statistics attached would appear to denounce that statement.

There has been a downward trend in obesity in younger people. The message does seem to be hitting home with them. That's why I can't understand why older people don't seem to be able to see that they are the problem. Some come up with all sorts of excuses, but don't seem to accept that maybe others have their reasons/excuses too. Maybe they should start off by refusing the next piece of cake they're offered rather tan claiming (as some have done) that everybody ate healthily in the good old days.

I think the whole obesity crisis is fuelled by ignorance of food values. My boarding school had an excellent domestic science facility which not only taught us how to cook, but also what ratio of protein, fat and carbohydrates a healthy body needs. These theory lessons weren’t very interesting, but the balance of them have stayed with me. My own daughters weren’t as lucky in their schools, but I taught them and they are both good cooks. Their children are a very healthy weight and are rarely ill. They have some financial struggles like most families, but healthy eating is very high on their list of priorities.

Incidentally, out of the 500 children at my school, not one was overweight. No snacks, if you were hungry it was just tough. Compulsory sports six days a week. Our weekly treat on Sundays was a Lyons chocolate cup cake in silver foil. How we looked forward to that!

However, as a child, if I was able or allowed to eat what is available to children today, I probably would! Junk food is just so cheap and easily available.

What a vile and, quite frankly, ignorant post quizqueen!

Good post Doodledog. I think if the problem is really going to be addressed, policy makers need to experience the real problems some people face. It's not always to do with making "bad choices".

I think a lot of it has to do with Tory benefactors.
A watershed for adverts is just to look like We're doing something! And will achieve very little.

Maybe because some of the chain owners are Tory benefactors?

I agree that offering cheap pizza does seem to fly in the face of the 'obesity' message.

I'm a bit bewildered by the ban on advertising before the watershed, too. What difference does it make if a burger or doughnut is advertised at 8.30pm or at 9.30? On the whole it is adults who will be buying, or older children for whom the watershed is an irrelevance, so I don't understand why the timing of the ads is important. I'd rather they banned the gambling ones, but that is for a different thread.

The government is offering £10 off certain restaurants to encourage people to start eating out again but the main restaurants taking up this offer are the fast food outlets. If they are so concerned about obesity why didn't they restrict this offer to healthy menus only?

Another barrier to healthy eating is the trend for out of town supermarkets. It's easy enough to shop cheaply and healthily if you live near a market, or have a supermarket in walking distance (assuming you have time to shop and carry the stuff home), but if you live on an estate with one franchised minimart and have to take a taxi into the nearest town or go in three times a week on the bus it's not so easy. Minimarts often offer the 'choice' between frozen processed food, and a couple of wrinkled carrots and a bruised apple - it's not always about laziness at all.

A friend of mine ended up on an estate like that after her divorce years ago, which left her bringing up two small children on her own. She was unable to work as the youngest was a toddler, and the punitive benefit system meant that she had to spend her share of the proceeds of the marital home before she could claim, whilst her ex-husband could use his share as a deposit on a new home for his new life with his girlfriend. She got a council house on an estate about 5 miles from the nearest town. It had one shop, and the alternative was an expensive bus ride or a taxi to the supermarket in town.

She was (and is) a very good cook, and knows how to make nutritious meals from scratch, but was in a poverty trap when it came to getting ingredients to do so. Nowadays it is easy to get food deliveries, but there is a minimum spend that is beyond a benefits budget, so people who can't afford a car can be badly disadvantaged.

13:10Chewbacca

Why do some women do this to other women? Instead of sticking together and supporting each other ? I can never understand it .

I was just thinking the very same thing myself gillybob. When I see hypercritical statements like "young women with legs like tree trunks" it makes me wonder how they'd feel if a total stranger was making such cruel and unpleasant judgements about their grandchildren.

Gillybob was referring to breast feeding.

Have you started twisting posts now to suit your own agenda. How petty you might not agree with my posts but this is a public forum and people can post what they like within forum rules.

Also perhaps they have legs like tree trunks because Granny or Mummy is frightened to tell them they have.

Id probably buy the spaghetti.if its dried pasta.not if its cans..then see what i have in cupboard/fridge already to make a sauce/recipe for it.

Do the 'lifestyle choices' include the children? A bit judgemental Quizqueen..

Interesting tweet I read yesterday
"Ppl should just buy healthier food"
For £2.00, ppl can have :
5 pack of spaghetti, 1 pack of 16 frozen sausages
or
1 bag of spinach and less than 1 punnet of grapes.

If you're a family on the breadline, how would you spend your £2?

As a child of the 50s, from a poor working class, council house family, I don't remember having snacks between meals except for the very occasional penny sweet and lived on Tizer, Lucozade and cups of tea. I can't remember drinking much water at all and would go hours without a drink and never had any health problems. We ate a home cooked meal of meat and 2 veg every day, as a priority

All this poverty malarkey nowadays is a myth perpetuated by socialists; people are better off than ever. My daughter is always claiming she has no money but is looking into taking a mortgage out of over £300,000, which will leave her with very little spare cash; hence she claims she's 'poor!!! That's not poverty, it's agreed debt!!!

If you're worried about poverty, you get free contraceptives so you don't have more children than you can afford to feed. You don't tie yourself into a mobile phone or Sky tv contract or car loan or smoke, drink, use drugs or gamble. I would refuse to let anyone who made these lifestyle choices use a food bank!

The school (when my son was still there,hes at college now) had cheek to send letters out to parents about what they could/couldnt put in sandwich lunch boxes while still serving up this fast food stuff at school dinners! Hyprocrites! Also it annoyed me no end, as not all kids are obese- my son had been seeing dietician for years to put ON weight as he was a very small prem baby who took 16 years to get to a 'normal' average height/weight..All his 6 older siblings have NEVER been overweight either, despite us not having ever been rich.Its the assumptions that anger me.

Men's ugly beer bellies, sheesh, imagine cutting through that if you were a surgeon. See what a job they've got ??

Barmyoldbat, if anything, I must be underweight if on examination a while back a doctor could feel the tip of my liver just under the ribs on the right-hand side
I can't help the way I'm built, I've always eaten like a horse, though slowed down a lot with age and no exercise to speak of these last few months.

The doctor had never felt anyone's liver like that and sent me poste-haste for an abdominal scan to check that things were alright. Thankfully yes, just a small spleen had been reported but I won't lose sleep over that---and a thin body.

I'm neither rich nor poor, I get by which is the main thing.

EllanVannin

All kids in my day were thin through lack of a good diet and also poverty, so obese doesn't equal poverty.
Nothing cheap about takeaways or McDonald's. A sack of potatoes would work out cheaper.

Being greedy makes you obese. Eating too much and overloading the gut which means that all the organs in your body have to work overtime breaking everything down and what can't be managed remains as fat within the body which over time builds up then causes mischief later on in years.

Not entirely!

Being unable to move around has a huge effect, and poverty IS a barrier to eating healthily - I know that if I went onto a high protein diet it would fall off me despite being unable to mobilise fully - but as I find it difficult to cook, and I have other issues like no teeth which I have lost in 3 years due to a nasty little auto-immune thing called Sjogrens Syndrome, a stoma which means I can't eat much fruit and veg and in financial hardship, I just cannot afford to eat like that!! I literally live off milk all day and try and eat something in the evening when I have sat down for a few hours and don't feel as nauseous due to the 4 hernias I have .....

Not always as easy as it sounds - oh and I now have a kidney cancer diagnosis (which was missed by my local hospital) and about to lose one kidney shortly, so I don't even feel like eating anyway!

Perhaps I should post a definition of hyperbole?

I’m trying not to inhale my tea having a vision of Chinese people with trollies full of baby milk checking out at Aldis all over Newcastle. Why Newcastle and not Liverpool or Dover or Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh?

Also, in 1945, the country was still on rations..and only 'take away was the chip shop, an occasionally only treat)- A lot of mixed views on here, but yes kids need to be taught in high school as we did (im 57) how to cook, what to cook& why.we had 'domestic science' which taught the whole shebang- what foods were good/bad, and why, how, for what reasons, etc etc. So we would know what was healthy and then how to cook it.Kids these days get a meal plonked in front of them, and (mostly) gobble it down & get back to video games.In my day if we did rush a meal down it was so we could go straight back out to play with our mates.(so we were excercising) if the kids aren't educated they'll carry on just buying/eating stodge.Also school dinners, yes used to be a proper meal, now they are just like fast food, despite Jamie Oliver's interference, which actually made it worse! Now its all stuff with sauces on, or paninis covered in cheese.or pizzas.NO fresh veg- except maybe a sprinkle of wilted lettuce stuck in the panini or burger bun.

Same here.. none of the children were overweight. Come to think of it none of my children had overweight children in their classes either

Why do some women do this to other women? Instead of sticking together and supporting each other ? I can never understand it .

I was just thinking the very same thing myself gillybob. When I see hypercritical statements like "young women with legs like tree trunks" it makes me wonder how they'd feel if a total stranger was making such cruel and unpleasant judgements about their grandchildren.

School photos,
A lot of children cannot be photographed because they need to be hidden. Perhaps from an abusive parent. That could be why group photos have fallen out of favour.
Sad

My observation is that it is young women who are mostly overweight/ obese

The official statistics attached would appear to denounce that statement.

You clearly have no idea how intimidating and hurtful women can be towards others who choose (for whatever reason) not to breast feed

Exactly Oopsminty a while back I posted that the Chinese were buying up all the baby milk in Newcastle and sending it to China for profit. This was absolutely true before I am accused of racism.

Instead of offering sympathy that my DD was unable to find any of the correct milk to feed her (very allergic) baby I was harangued by some for the fact that my DD was not breastfeeding.

Why do some women do this to other women? Instead of sticking together and supporting each other ? I can never understand it .

And another thing to remember about today's society is the fear of "stranger danger" which developed since the 80's. Today's children are not able to go out by themselves exploring their neighbourhoods as we did on bikes or walking. If we do see groups of children/teenagers out on the streets they are seen to be "up to no good". So children don't get the same exercise and fresh air as we did in the "good old days".