I agree, but when exactly?

I think hospitals gyms and high schools all annoy me with the machines of crisps chocolate bars and fizzy drinks in their foyers or dinning rooms

DH and myself had a conversation around this in the car this morning. All this talk of Britains obese children. I just don't see it. I look at the children at my DGC school, and the children I see attending our other local schools and none of them appear remotely obese! When we were at school, many years ago, there was always one 'fat kid' in the class. I am taliking abour 45 - 50 years ago here. The children that my DGC go to school/playschool with all appear fit an healthy. Can't actually say I have noticed one obese child. Is it really as rife as they say?

as far as I'm aware all the schools in our area do the daily mile ...well it originated here .My GC are always happy to tell people about it and even the 8 year old and her friends count their steps and compete to see who has done the most over the day .
My GS is in High School he gets PE EVERY day ,he's in the basketball team ,the rowing team the athletics team and loves exercise .He also has a "full curriculum" but there doesn't seem to be any problem fitting PE into it.He's doing very well in Maths ,the sciences,english and art ..so it is possible to iclude it all .

knicka63 DH and myself had a conversation around this in the car this morning. All this talk of Britains obese children. I just don't see it. I look at the children at my DGC school, and the children I see attending our other local schools and none of them appear remotely obese! When we were at school, many years ago, there was always one 'fat kid' in the class. I am taliking abour 45 - 50 years ago here. The children that my DGC go to school/playschool with all appear fit an healthy. Can't actually say I have noticed one obese child. Is it really as rife as they say?

I agree with you. Occasionally I see one but he/she usually has a very overweight mother, so might well be hereditary.

Now if you are talking teenagers, who are not exactly children, you do see large girls, but I'd rather that than a nation of anorexiacs or bulimics.

"PE every day"!!!!!! That would have taxed even my ingenuity - the main thing I learned at school was how to create as many ways as possible to get out of PE! Poor kids.

In the 1980s and 1990s schools were encouraged to sell off their sports fields for development. Short term gain, long term loss. Short-termism was the key feature of Thatcher's "selling off the family silver". Once these facilities are lost, they become almost impossible to replace.

In my granddaughter high school lots of very fat children and of her classmates/friends I’d estimate over 50% are obese including boys and girls. They only have one PE lesson and half the girls cry off with an ailment or other excuse.
I’m thankful that GD is a skinny bean pole. I agree it would be difficult to fit in extra time but I think it’s really talking about primary years which should be a little more flexible surely.

Knickas63 my grandson got a letter from primary school about 7 years ago saying he was overweight. ( according to the prevalent statistics).
He was a great fruit rather than desserts fan, did gym swimming and karate and used a trampoline in the back garden. He wasn’t even remotely overweight, but the government change the levels to make things appear how they want.
There are some overweight (not obese) children around; 1 or 2 in each class where I teach, but if all the others are fit, what’s causing the problem?

My main recollection of school sports is being whacked on the ankles by a hockey stick on a very cold day, trying to climb a rope (why??), exercising on a very itchy mat and trying to jump over a piece of equipment whose name I have deleted from my memory (something horse?).

Looking at the children in my local area I can't say any of them are obese.

DH and I were talking about the same thing yesterday, knickas63. We did the school run for one grandson yesterday and for another the day before, both in Reception. Different primary schools in completely different settings. One has massive playing fields, one more urban with hardly any outdoor space. The children were all running round like mad things, seemingly fit and well. Many riding bikes or scooters to school. No sign of any obesity, and barely any that we'd think were overweight.

Yet NHS Digital says that the prevalence of obesity has risen for the second successive year from 9.3 per cent in 2015-16 to 9.6 per cent in 2016-17 for children in reception.

digital.nhs.uk/news-and-events/news-archive/2017-news-archive/obesity-prevalence-increases-in-reception-age-primary-school-children

The report does state that the figures are much higher in areas of deprivation.

Once again parents are abdicating responsibility. Why should it be up to schools to deal with this. I agree they could play a bigger part but parents should be more responsible in areas of diet and exercise. Families should ditch some screen time in favour of exercise.

Hear hear, sodapop
Those wretched machines at stations and even in hospitals, spilling over with fizz and fattening foods are too easy to use. Remove them for starters - what the eye doesn't see.........

Perhaps parents should be responsible for what their child eats and how much exercise they get

Just a thought.

I live in a very mixed, inner city area and have to say that there are a lot of overweight children attending both primary and secondary schools. Most of these children live in tenement or high-rise flats and I do understand the difficulty parents have as many have nowhere to play outside. That does not mean they "have" to be fat - the diet and lifestyle at home is clearly crucial.

The daily mile could maybe be instead of a PE lesson, or incorporated into maths, or english with a bit of imagination. You can walk a daily mile while reciting your times tables, or learning french.

But it should not be a school responsibility to ensure the health and wellbeing of a child - that belongs to the parent.
However, a poorly nourished, overweight child is unlikely to excel at school - and so the teachers are left with the dilemma.

Overweight children are also often targeted by the school bullies. This can make their lives miserable.

Apart from diet, the biggest difference over time must be the fact that few children are actually walking to school or anywhere else.

Nearly all of us either walked to school or took public transport, and that also involved quite a bit of walking. This has been replaced by the school run, which is, on the whole, bad for children and for the environment.

There don't seem to be too many overweight children at the GS's school. But there are quite a lot of very overweight mothers which suggests that their children will succumb in the end.

I’m all for schools allocating some time to PE/Games, but I do believe that ultimately it is the responsibility of parents to do what they can to ensure that their children are healthy in every respect. If parents were to spend a wee bit of time walking/playing/ exploring with their children, all would benefit from the physical activity, the time spent in each other’s company and the time away from screens and social media. It takes effort to be a parent!

School memories of PE were team games, where if you weren't in one of the school teams, you were left to get on by yourself. The best players were allowed to choose the people they wanted in the teams for the lesson and the rest . . . The advent of athletics and cross country running was a real benefit as it was mainly an individual sport.

Doctors and nutritionists will tell you that the average kid or adult day does not leave enough time for enough exercise to work off a full fledged Coca Coca habit.

Three cans of soft drink has the same effect on insulin resistance as downing six Mars bars.

More exercise is great for fitness, but actually losing weight is not possible without significant diet change resulting in a calorie deficit.

Ginger/sodapop/etc is bloody awful stuff for weight control and dental health, and a taste for it once acquired is damnably hard to lose.

(Incidentally, diet soda is even harder on the teeth because of the phosphates in it.)

The reason public health bang on about fizzy drinks so much is that consumption of those is believed to be the single biggest driver of weight problems in kids.

I am wondering if all these obese children that arecongregated in certain areas, are skewing the figures, and that these areas need to be targeted? Also, they are using Bmi, which has been discredited. My own grandson is like 'a rasher of wind' as my gran would have said. Very skinny. He wasn't overweight, but he would have been with just a couple of extra pounds. Ridiculous.

^ .....count their steps and compete to see who has done the most over the day.^

I heard this about teachers in the staff rom: one teacher who seemed to get the most steps in every time, didn't admit she had strapped the gadget to her dog....

Both my DGC's Primary Schools do the Daily Mile during morning break (weather permitting) so no need to change clothes. In inclement weather they do their mile up and down the main corridor at one school and in the gym at the other. This is facilitated by staggering break times by year groups.

Having done years of school pick-ups, I have observed that there are one or two obese children in each class. I have also noted that these 'fat' children are daily collected by their Grandmothers who greet them with sweets and fizzy drinks. - Just saying

I believe the daily mile started in Scotland. My great nephews in Glasgow really enjoy doing it - they've never had a weight problem; both parents are thin as rakes!

My small DGC (8,6,6,4) all do many after school activities too; golf, swimming, dance, football plus rainbows and cubs which are also pretty active. This week the schools have introduced a compulsory sports week with pre school runs and exercise throughout the day! All the tinies are now exhausted and very bad tempered! It’s another example of one size fits all solutions! Not all children are obese (ours aren’t!) we all eat a healthy (vegetarian) diet and lots of fresh veg and very little screen time so these compulsorary exercise regimes are not needed here?