Parents are to blame for obese children - not governments
An interesting and (potentially) controversial comment piece in The Telegraph this morning about child obesity and parental responsibility.
Just who is responsible? Quote:
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My own position is that it's nutritionists, in their usual form, who are the real source of misinformation. It's like they are part of the scam diet industry, which offers those packaged foods for high prices, then gets to do it again because there's no maintenance.
I remember when cigarette advertising was banned. Isn't sugar also dangerous? Like cigarettes, one cupcake won't kill you. But it's never ONE cupcake. |
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I was about to say the same thing. A lot of parents really are trying to do right by their kids when it comes to nutrition though. One of the main problems is that the gov't keeps telling us to cut calorie intake, primarily by cutting fat intake. There's not a clear-cut minimal amount of protein recommended. But carbs - sure, you and your kids need to eats gobs of carbs every single day of your life, just cut back on the added sugar, and make sure half of the grains are whole grains. Easy enough to figure out foods that will meet those requirements - It's all right there on the nutrition stats on every single package you buy. You don't even need to look at the number of grams per serving on the label, just look down the last column, which shows what percentage of the recommended daily amount a serving provides. If you look at that, whole wheat bread, whole grain cereals (such as shredded wheat), and dried fruit easily meet those requirements, and therefore must be extremely good for you, since they're almost all carbs and fiber, with little to no fats (and no cholesterol!), and little or no added sugar. Unfortunately that doesn't work to keep from gaining excess weight, because the recommended daily allowances are so skewed in the wrong direction. Even if you're looking at the nutrition stats for a cupcake - most Hostess cupcake nutrition stats show the total carbs and fats equal in percentage of daily recommendations. Going by the back of package nutrition information, if you have room in your daily allowances for the calories and sugar, how bad can it be? :rolleyes: |
Yes, the buck stops with the parents, 'cause the fed gov will do nothing.
I didnot let my kids eat school lunches: Just garbage food. Thank God I met DANDR in the early years of having kids. Just wish keto for pregnant women and kids was ok then .....that is a new concept. My kids did eat better after toddler years. No fruit juices, less bread. Do wish it had been more LC. Hard to change teens and what they want to eat. |
People want to do the right thing. Which is why confusing them about what that is becomes so wrong.
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There aren't these two options, where there's either a parent's responsibility to do what's right for their kids, versus a wider social responsibility. The article talks about just blaming others--so blame the parents. Sharing responsibility works, sharing blame--eh. Might shame people into action.
Cigarettes--obviously, adults who smoke are responsible for their actions. So are the cigarette companies that actively spread disinformation to make it harder for those adults to make intelligent decisions. Coca-Cola paying to help make sure calorie in/calorie out and exercise's contribution to energy balance dominate the discussion--there's a responsibility there to at least not fog people's minds about what the best course of action is. Same with government. Schools? Public school is mandatory for most kids. Schools have custody for long stretches of time--obviously they have a responsibility, a good portion of what children eat is eaten at school. Teachers shocked at how much fatter some kids got after some time in lockdown--they might have gained just as much weight going to class in that time--but then it would be gradual. It's always more shocking when you see somebody who's gained weight after half a year, than it would be seeing it slowly accumulate over that period of time, day to day. The more endemic this thing is, the less I tend to blame the parents. If they are making wrong decisions--obviously they're presented with something in the environment that makes those wrong decisions highly likely. I needed discipline to get to my current weight. But the discipline became more useful the more I experimented and learned what works for me. Also--discipline is limited, most useful I think in designing an environment where I'm not driven to fail. |
Teaser you said "Also--discipline is limited, most useful I think in designing an environment where I'm not driven to fail." And this is true, too true.
As a society, we changed the avalability of alcohol and cigarettes. Seat belts, safety glass, crumple fronts are the norm in automobiles. As well as separate front and back breaks. Electrical wiring in a building has been changed several times and is mandated by law. My Hvac son tells me how the fine is HUGE to allow certain refrigerants to be emitted into the air. Here liability car insurance is required and not an option to drive a car in MA. Other states vary on this. Helmets for motorcycles reauired. Fire detectors in new house contruction reauired. Children must have all listed vaccinations to attend public school. There are hundreds of laws and rules governing food, but we seem to have missed the bigger pucture. The quality of the food itself. That we are surrounded by garbage..."foods" that I will not feed to my dogs and chickens. "Foods" that dont get dumped in compost. Goes in trash. Of course, my teens will grab it and gobble it down. It comes into my house via food pantry boxes. Food selected for me. Pre covidI could avoid crap food. Now I pick up boxes packed for the general public, filled with sweets, cookies, cold cereal, sugar filled granola bars, etc. We are forced at every turn to avoid garbage food. How people surtound themselves by crap is very different than the meals my mother made 50 years ago. Non-gmo . More organic. More local. More time spent on aquiring quality food. |
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Good point. There is a massive amount of misinformation developed by and shared among many that makes it impossible to place blame on anyone. So why try? Focus should be on identifying healthy behaviors and exposing those widely recommended practices that harm people. Easier said than done, but I know many who now have this awareness and are making changes accordingly. Much different than 10 years ago, so maybe that's some indication of progress. |
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Unfortunately the feed-lot/weight gain based food pyramid the fed gov came up with is the very reason kids are being fed such a garbage diet at school. For the most part, my kids didn't eat school lunches either, even though the lunches weren't nearly as dismal then as they are now - At least once they started going to a suburban school, they had access to more variety. In middle school and high school, that even included a salad bar. A reasonable amount of protein was still part of school lunches back then, although they definitely kept things pretty low fat, which still put too much emphasis on starches. The thing about this is, when I think about the school lunches we had back in the 60's, it was based mostly on the 4 food groups. We'd have some kind of protein, mostly beef, because chicken wasn't used as widely back then. Fridays, there would be fish - most likely as a breaded/fried fish sandwich. There would be some kind of grain of course - most often a roll or slice of bread, with real butter, sometimes pasta, no whole grains. There was at least one vegetable (peas, green beans, corn, carrots, or a mix of those), usually some kind of fruit (canned, in heavy syrup)... and most of the time, there was a dessert, usually a thin square of cake with a thin coating of frosting on it, sometimes a fruit cobbler (which would cover both fruit and dessert categories), or a little cup of icecream - which was full fat ice cream, not ice milk. Milk was provided with every meal, always whole milk. Despite the fact that we were obviously being fed far more fat and calories than the kids are allowed in school lunches now, very few kids were even slightly chubby, and it was very rare to have even one child in your class who was severely overweight. They try to explain that away by saying kids were outside playing more, running off all those excess calories back then, and that may be true to a certain extent. But from what I recall, the kids might play tag for a couple of minutes, or climb a tree... then simply sit in that tree talking, or sit in one spot on the ground making mud pies for the next half hour. Even most of the playground games back then - duck-duck-goose, hop-scotch, jump rope - most of your time playing those games you were idle, waiting your turn. Dodge ball (at least the version we played in those days) started out with half the kids in the center running around trying to avoid being hit by the ball (there was only one ball in play), but as they were eliminated one by one, the number of idle kids around the outside increased, and unless an individual happened to be the one to catch the ball to throw it at the kids remaining in the middle, they were just standing there - not running off any excess calories. If it was simply a matter of calories in/calories out, we should have been the fattest kids ever back then. It was about the diet, and they really do have a terrible diet being pushed on them now. To make matters worse, it's not just the school lunches, many schools provide breakfast now too - so they're eating even more starches and sugars, even if what they're being fed has been given the aura of good health by virtue of being from whole grains, or fruit based. Your body doesn't know the difference - it's still starch and sugar. I know I'm just preaching to the choir though - those of us who have been on this forum or a while already know these things. |
Well written for anyone new to LC, so worth the tine to write out.
In HS, one son has access to microwave and fridge in his shop class, so can eat real food he brings to school. Yes, the company/ vendor that provides the food in k-12 in our town district follows fed gov guidelunes to get fed $$$ to fund the lunch program. Kids pay $2.50 for lunch......buys lots of carby foods. Yes, packing a lunch cost more than $2.50 but far mire nutritious.....and my kids did well in school cause they fed their brain well. I do wonder what a 2.50 could buy if at home for lumch. A buger with cheese and a pile of vegies. |
I don't blame my parents for making me fat at all. They were only doing what was recommended to them by the government, taking in all that advice for lots of carbs, and low fat everything.
We've seen the data that indicates how the US population responded with its eating habits following the release of the 1980 DGAs. I have similar data for New Zealand as well. The people did as they were told. They were just told wrong. |
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Likewise, and it was a lot better than the situation now. You look at "people in the street" photos then and now; it's like a pandemic glandular disorder hit in the time between. DH and I are only 2 years apart in age, and we agreed you rarely saw a fat child while we were growing up. Not only that, they were "on the chubby side" but not outright overweight. Likewise the adults. Turns out, half the plate being forms of protein, and only 1/4 of it grains, was better for more people. Not saying we should go back to it, because I don't think nutritional science had anything to do with that plan, either. But the contrast outlines how the pyramid had to be emphasizing all the wrong things. |
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Instead of fixing blame, fix the problem.
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