Childhood obesity strategy "lite"

Besides which, eating sugary breakfast cereals doesn't make a person unhealthy. From the age of eleven when I started getting my own breakfast, I ate cornflakes well sprinkled with sugar pretty much every morning for the next seven years (my fast growing teenage years). It didn't affect my health because I didn't eat too much of that or anything else. We need to stop beating about the bush: it's eating too much that's the problem at the bottom of any obesity that isn't caused by a medical problem.

And the further problem is that it's hard to stop. That is the problem we should be tackling.

Quite, bags. It's hard. People want easy.

Thanks, goab. And you can't really blame them when their lives are stressful.

Finally, just to push home my basic point: people cleverer than me and with far more scientific knowledge get fat too. It's about quantity not quality or knowing how many grams of this that or the other are in your food.

I am quite small and have always watched my weight. When I had two children I ensured they had a healthy diet and didn't lthem binge on sweet or fatty foods. However, they inherited my husband's genes. He wasn't too large (until recently when he gave up the fight) but his mother, uncle and maternal grandparents were huge. In consequence, both children have a weight problem. My son is about three stone overweight and my daughter yo-yos.

I am, of course, extremely distressed by this given my efforts at self restrainst and my desire for my children to live long, healthy lives. What I have noticed though is that it is not a metabolism problem but a willpower problem. They can lose weight when they 'get a grip' but they cannot deny themselves for long.

Soryy, 'let them' not 'lthem'. No edit button!

I think it is about what you eat. The problem about "calories in calories out" is that it implies that 1000 calories of doughnuts and fizzy pop is equal to 1000 calories of meat, fish and vegetables. Which it clearly isn't if we want to be remotely healthy.
I think we all ate sugar in our youth. It was mostly real sugar that you could measure though, not concealed in processed food and appearing under different names. If we asked for too many sweet things we were told not to be greedy. It wasn't cheaper tha staple foods either.
For me the basic message is still "eat real food".
Exercise is important but it should be about basic fitness, not burning off food that the body doesn't need.

I have read and enjoyed this thread especially the usual logical and sensible posts from bags who always seems to put exactly what I would like to say if only I was as able as her.

Just to open up the discussion a bit more, can I pose the question :

Given the concerns of the medical profession about the obesity epidemic in this country, should food rationing be introduced as it was in WWII? The Nation's health was probably at its best ever then, even though many people were hungry and longed for sweetness.

I think everyone knows the saying "moderation in all things", mamie. No-one argues that all food values are the same. We all know we need a variety of kinds of food. But the only thing that helps anyone lose weight (except if it's a medical problem they have) is to eat less of everything.

The actual doing isn't hard. For instance, last time soop and I met for lunch we gave one order for fish and chips but with two plates. It was plenty! Portion sizes are often too large. So, adapt! Act accordingly. This is what, as a species, we're not good at doing yet.

I wonder if, in the end, it will be a pill that sorts the problem: something that deals with the false hunger pangs that tell you you're hungry when, really, you're not.

There's a PhD project for a generation of budding nutritiionists.

And pharmacists.

I'm not keen on the rationing idea, gaga. It's an emergency response, e.g. in war-time when there isn't enough food to go round. The problem now is the opposite: too much. We have to learn how to solve the problem by free choices, I think.

My 3 DGC all eat like horses. They never seem to be full. They are all skinny with very good muscles (for their age and size). They all have masses amount of exercise therefore the extra calories in, are needed.

Another 3 children of similar ages could eat the same as they do, but not have the exercise and become very fat. Should we not be educating children (and their parents) on input and output.

There is a big debate about rationing on the Mumsnet thread.
Not going to get into a discussion about that on here Bags, but can obviously personally testify to having lost weight, kept it off long-term and improved health outcomes by cutting right down on certain foods (carbs), not on everything.
A pill - well it might help overcome sugar addiction, but it doesn't do much to help people have a healthy relationship with food.

People who have a healthy relationship to food won't need a pill, mamie.

I'm sure cutting down mainly on carbs helps some people. It will be because they are cutting down on calories too. If one wants to choose a group most likely to help one lose weight, carbs would seem the best choice.

But it (losing weight) works if one cuts down on one's overall intake as well. People who don't get enough calories, or only just enough, whatever the food is, don't get fat, even if they are malnourished as to nutrients.

Yes of course cutting down on everything works as well. The emerging evidence seems to suggest that people find it harder to sustain though.
Mumsnet thread here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2710611-So-how-would-you-tackle-childhood-obesity?pg=1
I find it fascinating to see the difference in the threads.

Bags I've taught enough secondary science classes to know the limits at the lower end of attainment.
I notice you didn't fancy spending half an hour trying to answer my A level question (can't say I blame you - the information required to reach an answer is not on the package and would require further research on the nutritional needs of children ) But I think you will find if you check that Cheerios gives nutritional profile including milk and Jordan's without. The cheaper cereal is claiming nutritional value based in part on the milk added to it.

@JessM

That's why I don't like the traffic lights - I think they give a false sense of security. Not only do they not give the overall carbohydrates (just sugar), but the %RDA figure is misleading, because the calorie needs of people varies widely. A toddler given the calories recommended for an adult will get fat.

Meant to add that the issue of 'cooking from scratch' also has its limitations - it depends what you cook! Whenever I decide to lose a few pounds, I find it easier to control what I'm eating by buying microwave meals, because the nutritional content is printed on the package. It's much harder to keep track when you're cooking something with a number of different fresh ingredients, especially as I live on my own and usually cook too much.

Further comparison of Cheerios and Jordans Country Crisp shows that the Jordans CC is also approximately 5p per adult portion more expensive than the Cheerios. Which doesn't quite fit with the 'just as cheap to eat well as to eat badly' theory.

jess, what proportion of people would you estimate are at a low enough level of understanding that they couldn't understand enough about basic food info (not A-level stuff) that they couldn't work out what sort of foods are high in calories, fats, sugars proteins and what aren't by reading the basic info on packets?

Does one really need to have studied much to know things like what are high protein foods, what are high carb foods and what are high vitamin foods? I thought that sort of thing was taught right through primary school.

Does one need to have studied much to know when one has eaten too much? Don't people feel full nowadays?

I honestly don't think the obesity epidemic is because of ignorance about food. I think it's simply that people eat more nowadays because they can and because, as I said before, we haven't adapted yet to there being a constant surplus.

Why do clever people who understand all the science get fat? My view is that it's not about knowledge. It's about appetite and the pleasure of eating, which I think makes it all a much more complex biological problem than knowing about food values.

"the issue of 'cooking from scratch' also has its limitations - it depends what you cook! Whenever I decide to lose a few pounds, I find it easier to control what I'm eating by buying microwave meals, because the nutritional content is printed on the package. It's much harder to keep track when you're cooking something with a number of different fresh ingredients"

Hallelujah!! For years I've been trying to get through to people that if they put as much salt/fat/sugar in their own recipes as the food manufacturers do they'll end up with home cooking that's just as unhealthy as processed food.

People will keep saying how they cook everything from scratch "because I know what goes into it", but you only have to read the sort of things people come out with to see that they have no idea. If people can't be bothered reading nutrition panels on food packets how are they going to be bothered calculating what's in their own recipes? Not so long ago there were people on here putting more sugar in their own pasta sauce than there was in the Dolmio that they were criticising. I've seen a foodie who was putting 2000kcal of cheese into a sauce, another who thought that three cherry tomatoes is a portion, and another who thought a 50kcal salad makes a lunch. When I asked her where she was getting the remaining 1950kcals from she didn't answer, probably because it was coming from chocolate and cakes scoffed in front of the telly.

"has anyone noticed the size of many of the nurses........I don't want Government to interfere but believe that education is better."

Healthcare workers must among the best educated about the health consequences of obesity, so if education hasn't stopped them getting fat it's probably not going to work on anyone else either.

There is an almost perfect correlation between childhood overweight/obesity and deprivation and a consistent pattern over time between various regions. Could it be that people 'comfort eat'? Or is it about some kind of short term survival instinct rather than thinking about the future? Whatever it is, it's clear that something irrational is going on.

When I go to Aldi, I'm always struck by how much cereal and bread is sold in the first aisle (I think all Aldis are the same).

So what about portion control in this discussion? IMO it must be a big factor. Many foods in recent years are being presented in bigger and bigger portions.
Look at this.
www.nhs.uk/news/2015/09September/Pages/Decreasing-portion-sizes-could-cut-obesity-levels.aspx

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34246119

Awww, thank you, crun. It's an issue I've raised with a number of people. I once worked somewhere, where the cook insisted on 'cooking everything from scratch' and claimed she was cooking healthily. My problem was that I'm diabetic and it was almost impossible for me to eat anything which wasn't packed with carbohydrates, including flour thickened stews, tomato-based sauces for pasta. The bread and soups were home-made, but were just as fattening as shop-bought versions.

Agree with you absolutely, nellie. Like many people, I was brought up not to leave anything on my plate and it's only recently that I can bring myself to leave food when I eat out. My attitude always used to be that I'd paid for it, so it would be criminal to leave it.

It's also about marketing bags which is designed specifically to get people to buy and consume as much as possible. I agree even the well educated are not fully rational when it comes to food.
And many bright and well informed people can still get fooled by something like "low fat" on a yoghurt pot for instance, not realising that it is still very high on sugar. Why not try asking a few people how many teaspoons of sugar are in a common brand of low fat yoghurt and see what range of answers you get. Here's an example:
www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=256916383
So a busy mum thinks that a low fat berry yoghurt is a reasonably healthy thing to give a child at the end of a meal not realising that there are more than 3 teaspoons of sugar in each serving. Yes, many of them would be able to work it out if they happened to know the number of grams in a teaspoonful...