Thu, May-02-19, 01:33
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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More in the British media today:
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The Permissive Parenting Fat Trap: how becoming stricter can cut childhood obesity
“She won’t eat fish pie – sorry. Please can you give her Nutella on toast instead? And it has to be white bread, she won’t eat brown. And please cut the crusts off. Thanks! X”
This was a text message I received a few years ago when I had a friend’s 7-year-old daughter home for dinner, along with my own daughters, then aged six and four. My mother was also there and sighed when I showed her the text. “You and your brother just ate whatever you were given.”
It’s a scene played out in homes all over the country: modern, well meaning parents, trying to do the right thing by giving in to their child’s dietary demands, while the generation of parents before them look on wearily.
But could new ‘obesity classes’ that teach parents to be stricter with their children be the answer, and help reverse Britain’s childhood obesity epidemic? Since a trial of the classes was introduced in Leeds ten years ago, the city’s childhood obesity levels have fallen from 9.4 per cent in 2014 to 8.8 per cent in 2016. Elsewhere in England, meanwhile, childhood obesity levels barely budged during that time, and more than a third of British schoolchildren now leave primary school overweight.
The eight week courses cost £50 and are provided by the charity Henry, which stands for Health, Exercise, Nutrition for the Really Young, and encourage parents to take charge when it comes to their children’s eating habits. The scheme was set up after the city saw an alarming rise in overweight teenagers and realised that once obesity is established it’s hard to reverse, and that the time to tackle it is in the early years.
The scheme is aimed particularly at deprived areas, but Kim Roberts, chief executive of Henry, says middle class parents could learn a lot from it too: “Parenting is a great leveller. And while there’s a big association with poverty and childhood obesity, I remember a director of education once saying to me, ‘I’m running a multimillion pound department, but that’s nothing compared to getting my 7-year-old to eat their greens and go to bed on time.’ And as a mother of three myself, I know this is a problem that affects us all.”
Indeed, despite the long held - and convenient for some - belief that childhood obesity is more common among poorer families - a study from Leeds Metropolitan University of 13,333 schoolchildren found those from “middle-affluent” areas of the city were more likely to be overweight than those in poorer neighbourhoods.
A quick glance through a typical middle class lunchbox will offer up some clues as to why: Pure Fruit Yo Yos (my daughter’s favourite), yoghurt covered raisins and smoothies aimed at children may well be organic and look healthy (and cost a small bomb) but they’re all essentially high-sugar snacks.
“There is currently an abundance of food available to children that simply wasn’t there thirty years ago,” says Roberts. “Childhood obesity levels were low and static until the 1980s, when they began to rise. One of the biggest changes is our food environment: from the 1980s onwards convenience culture arrived. We had microwaves, ready meals, and processed food. Snack culture exploded. We were encouraged by food manufacturers and high street cafe chains to eat on the go.
“Parents also became less aware of what was in their child’s food. As all working parents know, there isn’t always time to cook a meal from scratch. Busy parents were given the message their child needed a good breakfast to start their day well, but when you look at most breakfast cereals aimed at children, it’s easy for a child to have their entire sugar quota in one sitting before 9am.”
But Roberts is quick to point out the parenting classes aren’t a form of finger wagging, or intended to blame and shame parents. “The classes get alongside them and build their confidence. After all, the world in which their children now live has changed and their environment has become an easy one in which to overeat and be sedentary. Children don’t play out in the street or on their bikes as much as they used to, but rather spend a lot of time strapped into cars or staring at screens.”
And then of course there’s the rise in what’s known as ‘permissive parenting’. Speaking from personal experience, us modern parents tend to be a rather eager lot when it comes to pleasing our kids. We don’t like saying no. We like to offer choice. And, whisper it, in a busy world we sometimes need to take the (speedier) path of least resistance and if that means a snack to keep them quiet here, or an hour on the iPad over a trip to the park there, so be it.
And then there’s our fear of seeing our children go hungry: “Feeding a child is an emotive thing for a parent, even if they don’t realise it,” says Roberts. “It’s a way of showing love and care, and it can be distressing to see your child not eating. But one way to tackle this is to be realistic about portion sizes [see box]. Parents often have an unrealistic image of what a young child needs to eat and override their child’s natural sense of fullness with comments like, ‘Come on, one more mouthful!’ And reduce snacking to just two small snacks a day - so they’re actually hungry at mealtimes.”
If this all seems like old fashioned common sense, Roberts says it’s unwise to over-idealise previous generation’s approach to mealtimes: “It wasn’t all rosy cheeks and milk in the past. In our classes we hear anecdotes from parents who, as young children, were made to sit at the table until everybody had finished, or forced to eat all their Brussel sprouts. And guess what? It didn’t make them love sprouts. In fact, we know a dictatorial approach to mealtimes backfires and is associated with higher rates of obesity later on.
“These classes take the best bits of the old-fashioned, eat-your-sprouts approach, and the permissive, what-would-you-like? one. And it’s an approach that can be applied to meal times, but also tooth brushing, screen time and bedtime. Most parents are doing a fantastic job, they sometimes just need to be steered back on course.”
Back to school: what parents will learn in obesity classes
- Look after yourself: It starts with the parents: so look after yourself, get enough sleep, reduce stress, and eat well, and your child will be more likely to model your behaviour.
- Limit treats (just don’t call them that): Children don’t need a pudding after every lunch and dinner, so if you’re in this habit, try to break it and give them plain yoghurt with fruit instead, with ice-cream being a twice a week treat. “And don’t call them ‘treats’,” says Roberts, “otherwise they’ll see their main meal as something to endure, in order to get to the sugary ‘treat’.”
- Don’t ban treats: Similarly, don’t ban things like chocolate or Haribos, because then they become alluring forbidden fruit. Or, as Roberts puts it, “At the next birthday party, your child will go face first into the chocolate fingers.”
- Offer healthy choices: Rather than saying, “Would you like carrots?” say, “Would you prefer broccoli or carrots?” Make children feel they have a choice, while you’re in control.
- Get them outside: Young children can’t sit still...unless there’s a TV or screen around. Now the weather is getting better, get them outside as often as possible. “It may not be possible for them to play in the street with neighbourhood friends like you did, so you may have to plan it,” says Roberts.
- Watch portion sizes: Henry classes offer this handy tip: use your child’s hands as a guide. A child should have their own clenched fist sized portion of pasta or mashed potato, a palm (no fingers) amount of protein, a cupped hand of fruit and vegetables and two forefingers of dairy. Make it fun by getting your child to compare their hand size to their portion sizes.
- Accept fussy stages: “They’re normal in toddlers,” says Roberts, “and an evolutionary throwback to when we didn’t want our roaming 2-year-olds to wander off and eat a poisonous plant.” So allow for them, but persevere: “Keep offering a wide variety of food alongside their favourites, so when they go through fussy phases - typically in toddlerhood and the teenage years - the groundwork has been laid.”
- Don’t ‘multi-cook’: Rather than cooking different meals to accommodate each child’s requests, make a meal that’s broadly the same but with some choice. “Lay out jacket potatoes, or pasta, with a couple of toppings or sauces, and a selection of vegetables, and allow everybody to self serve,” says Roberts. That way, children feel they have a choice, but the parents stay in control.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-...nting-fat-trap/
For anyone interested, I am currently reading First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by the British food writer, Bee Wilson, which talks about how we acquired our eating habits in childhood, why they’re not hardwired, and how you can change them for the better and teach your own children to eat healthy.
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We are not born knowing what to eat; we each have to figure it out for ourselves. From childhood onwards, we learn how big a portion is and how sweet is too sweet. The way we learn to eat holds the key to why food has gone so disastrously wrong for so many people. But how does this happen? And can we ever change our food habits for the better?
An exploration of the extraordinary and surprising origins of our taste and eating habits, in First Bite award-winning food writer Bee Wilson explains how we can change our palates to lead healthier, happier lives.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Bite.../dp/0007549725/
https://www.amazon.com/First-Bite-H.../dp/0007549725/
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There's also a good review of the book in this NYTimes article:
Bee Wilson’s ‘First Bite: How We Learn to Eat’
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/...arn-to-eat.html
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