Is obesity linked to class?

I hope you are right Bags I was thinking Big Boned Woman

Well big bones will make you big too, gillybob . BBBW = big-bones and beautiful woman. There. No prob.

Or worse still..... Bloody Big Woman

Yes the big bones are my excuse, pity about the wobbly bits that cling to them though Bags

gillybob you and me both

I think the Daily Mail is using sensationalist tactics in their headline. This minister appears to have been trying to draw attention to the dangers of junk food and TV dinners, specially among poorer people. In the body of the article it says "Government figures published last month showed that 24.3 per cent of the most deprived 11-year-olds in England were obese, compared with 13.7 per cent of children from the wealthiest homes."

Of course lots of rich people are overweight and lots of poor people are slim, but from the statistics it would appear that the children of poor people are more likely to be fat.I think it would be good if we could discuss this problem without talking about class, which is a very emotive word. The minister is talking about a real problem and we don't help to improve things if we just shoot the messenger!

A similar version of this story was also published in the Telegraph.

Perhaps the disappearance of domestic science from the curriculum has contributed to this! As far as I understand there is less of a focus on teaching students how to produce cheap, nutritious meals and more on the theory of a healthy diet! I know it was mostly the less academic girls in my school that 'did' Dom Sci but all of us, regardless of our ability had to learn a dozen basic recipes, how to use an iron and to clean a room properly!

By this point it was time to choose our options for GCE..but we had the basics to be good wives!

nanaej you have reminded me of one of our family jokes - when my DS was about 14, his food technology end of year report said 'Edward must improve his pastry skills' - we are still pulling his leg at every opportunity.

I remember the kids all spent about 8 weeks making pizzas - apparently the 'process' was important. The point of it was more than I could work out and I agree with you that the basics of nutrition and how to apply them to everyday living would be of far more benefit.

I don't know about obesity, but poor health in general does seem class linked statistically . I was watching a doctor yesterday - I think he was in Portsmouth - talking about a massive problem, with the poorest people dying 10 years earlier than the wealthiest and suffering much more from obesity, diabetes, liver disease and smoking related illnesses.

A BBW is a big, beautiful woman.

That's moi!

Sadly 'beige food' is cheaper. However, I'm not sure if it's a class thing or not. A lot of working class women in the past did feed their families well on cheaper, but home made food. Nowadays people prefer to sit in front of the TV, play their X-boxes, talk on their mobiles etc. Plenty of households do not have a dining room table. Plenty eat in front of the TV with their plate of beige food. A girl at work told me that everyone goes into the kitchen, picks up their plate of food and goes off to watch TV or even into their own room, with own Tv to watch own programme. A lot of families do not sit around a table together eating and going over their day. I have memories of Sunday lunch [a roast of course] sitting round the dining room table with my parents and grandparents watching everyone adult having a row about something. It was huge fun. However, we also sat around that table roaring with laughter. Work now is almost a 24 hour thing, shops open all hours - someone has to work in them. So people have different days off. Cooking is no longer taught in schools - now its food technology - learning about vitamens etc, but can you make a decent meal. In a lot of cases it's easier, but not cheaper, to buy a ready meal.

Fortunately I have never thought of myself as living in poverty. My mother, daughter and myself are all classed as obese. But then we have all suffered from PCOS.

That must be so difficult to live with ninathenana . The trouble with these blanket statements is they are just statements of statistical information, but we are all tempted to apply them to ourselves.

Another problem is the youngsters on benefits who are provided with a microwave rather than a proper cooker and pretty much condemned to a life of ready meals and take aways. Perhaps as well as get you into work courses there should be some how to look after yourself courses. The combination of no money, no job, and no home guidance on budgeting, shopping, cooking and sewing is just storing up trouble.

Deedaa It is perfectly possible to cook meals from fresh ingredients in a microwave. I prefer to use a conventional gas hob/electric oven combination but if I had only a microwave, nothing on earth would make me live on ready meals.

Obesity has always been linked with poverty because poor people can only afford to buy cheap, high fat, heavily processed carbohydrate foods.

In the late 1940s when I was about 6 we moved from London to Carlisle and where we lived in Carlisle was just across the road from an area of poor housing and even at the age of 6 i noticed a lot of fat older women about, something I hadnt seen where we lived in London. I asked my mother why these women were so fat. She told me that they came from poor families and the women tended to live on white bread and margarine because what decent food they could afford went first to their husband then the children and they came last when it came to eating.

My DS classes only taught me to make cakes!

My mother was to put it politely an 'adequate' cook and my MiL was worse. How does that explain that DH and I normally eat a lot of veg and fresh fruit and only rarely have anything processed. Most meals are made from fresh ingredients.

When DS3 lived in a bedsit in London at a young age there was only a microwave so we bought him a grill with 2 rings on top on which he managed to make proper meals. All 3 DSs cook proper dinners but not puds.

I think that obesity is very rarely inherited but more likely upbringing. Actually I think that obesity is almost always down to what we eat. I am hypothyroid so have to eat less than everyone else to be a healthy weight. I could use that as an excuse for obesity but instead am a bit overweight and trying to do something about it.

absent I know it is possible to cook with fresh ingredients in a microwave, I used to do it a lot myself. But I do think you need a reasonable level of cookery skills to be successful and I'm not convinced all these girls have that. Another problem is that so many of them construe advice as being somehow against them. I remember when I was in hospital before my son was born I was in a room with some girls whose babies were going to be small for their dates, probably because they smoked. They kept sneaking out for a smoke and said that the advice to stop smoking was "just THEM trying to stop us enjoying ourselves" I think that this attitude is still around when it comes to smoking drinking or living on takeaways.

Deedaa I think cookery skills of any sort are sadly lacking in many instances. Other Gransnetters have suggested a return to proper cookery classes in school and I certainly endorse that idea. I have encountered all kinds of ignorance about preparing and cooking food that it is almost impossible to believe. How about the person who put an egg in a saucepan and set it on the gas for 2 minutes to boil? She didn't know that you have to boil it in water. Or the check-out assistant in a large supermarket who failed to recognise a bunch of carrots with the tops on and insisted on ringing for the supervisor to identify the vegetable because "carrots don't have leaves"?

I stood in a lift once listening to the conversation between two girls one of whom had tried to boil rice to go with a supermarket curry, when a complete ready meal had been unavailable. She found it impossible to get it to cook and wouldnt try and cook rice again.

We only did a little cookery at school because we had to fit in latin lessons as well, but we did learn some basic dishes such as rhubarb crumble and jacket potatoes and I came away with the idea that cooking was possible and if I looked at a few cookery books I should be able to crack it. I'm not sure I would have got the same confidence from a food technology class.

Food technology is quite different from cookery lessons and the classes are much less practical. Absentdaughter's very first piece of food tech homework was to create a commercial snack with ingredients that would be available and at the same price all the year round. As a cookery writer I was able to help and advise but to do it "properly" took us several hours. Learning how to make an omelette, a pan of vegetable soup or a homemade hamburger would have been a lot more useful.

Yes absent, I remember the DDs' food tech lessons too - they have been a family joke for years. The first homework was to prepare not a meal but a brochure for a meal on an airline flight. The most bizarre was a "fish pie" which consisted of a small casserole dish with a side plate balanced on top as a lid, and on the plate a beautifully forked topping of mashed potato. Tasty. It was just for a photo for her coursework folder, as there had not ben enough time during class.

We seem to have morphed from one sort of class to quite a different sort.