I don't see big difference between fat pet owners and parents of overweight kids. The pets owners feed their pets too much, that's why their pets are fat!
Well, you can say that overweight kids are constantly hungry, that's why they ask more food.
The overweight kids are not hungry if they eat very often. They FEEL hungry. Or they simply learn to escape from emotional tension by eating more food than they need.
Anyway, if your overweight child is a normal, healthy child without any mental problem, then he or she can have normal healthy weight without bloody gastric bypass surgery or harmful chemical pills designed to reduce craving.
As a hypnotist who helps people lose weight, I can help your kid normalize his or her weight by changing their eating habits.
Of course, you, parent, has to change your feeding habits too! Remember, the fat pets are fat because their owners feed them too much.
You are welcome to visit my website for more useful info about hypnosis for weight loss:
http://www.hypnosisrapport.com/how-to-lose-weight-easily/
1
I think people a bit too over sympathetic towards people who’s children are obese, and try to find excuses for them or blame genetic disposition etc.
I watched a video of my beach town in the 1950’s. The beach is covered in hundreds of sun bathing men, women and children and not one of them is even slightly overweight.
This was England when food was rationed, and strangely enough, everyone was a healthy weight. That literally throws all the genetic arguements into the water.
We have access to so much information but the problem is that people don’t make the time to cook properly. It is literally child abuse. Think of all the physical and mental hurt and pain your child will have to go through, growing up with weight they don’t need.
It’s so simple but it’s been made so complicated, but logic makes it obvious what the problem is. The only difference between what we eat and every generation before us? Processed food. Just cut it out. So simple.
Some kids will only eat chicken nuggets and chips, but if they didn’t exist do you really think they would have starved themselves to death? No. Just keep giving them the same healthy stuff. I always think this about kids living in India, do you think that there are children who refuse food with spices? Probably not, because that’s basically the only option.
If you really love your child, only ever give them one option.
8
"Dr. Lumeng suggested that doctors should acknowledge to parents that “modern science really doesn’t fully understand what causes obesity.”
What? In a laudable attempt to remove the stigma from obesity, the article is needlessly confusing here.
There is no mystery to what causes weight gain. You gain weight when you have a caloric surplus and lose it when you have a caloric deficit. Yes, yes, there are nuances; some foods seem to be better at inducing satiety than others, and some individuals seem to have bodies that do not provide very good signals as to when they have had enough to eat. But it all boils down to the basic physics of the caloric equation.
What is difficult is to maintain a reasonable level of caloric balance given that we are 1) surrounded by calorie dense and often unhealthy foods and 2) are far more sedentary on average than we used to be. Certainly, this will not be solved by shaming the obese.
But to act as if we HAVE NO IDEA why modern humans (and their pets) are so much fatter than their grandparents, as if there is some mystical force causing it that we can never fathom, is obscurantist to say the least.
3
Kids are just fat mostly due to their own laziness...It does not matter color, creed, or situation. Parents are working even harder in todays world to be able to live in the most decent place they can for their kids, and to be able to give the fat lazy kids more cause to get fatter; cell phones, computers, games, and other crap they use as an excuse to be lazy. Last week I saw a fat kid who thought they were a model of some sort; prancing around like royalty in as store; stomach budging way out, could not touch their toes if they tried for days. Parents create these fat fantasyland identities in these kids...If their son or daughter are fat, the parents need make them realize that, not tell them they are princesses and princess. Magic Johnson son is prime example; who cares if he is gay, he's fat and disgusting...Honey boo boo, gat kid in Nike comercial, etc...Drug addicts don't deserve praise or gifts for stopping the use of drugs, idiots, and fat people should not be applauded for losing weight, they should if wsnt to live longer, dumb fat idiots;tv shows about helping fat people like endangered elephants, those people look disgusting, and they did it to their self...Parents are some what responsible for kids, but the kids need to get off their butts.
1
We have two kids with highly sensitive palates and the “introduce a food 10 times” rule or the “only put out vegetables and fruits at snack time” rule both completely failed. They will literally starve themselves into fainting before they’ll eat those foods. We do limit sugar and desserts, don’t have soda in the house, and eat a home-cooked meal for dinner most of the time. However, to keep our kids alive & growing we had to ditch a lot of rules and expectations. They simply gag on most fruits and vegetables, always have no matter how often they’re served, so instead we focus on eating what is palatable to you, but stopping when you are full. Some days they eat starches and little else, but every meal cannot be an epic unwinnable battle. Neither child is overweight, but I wonder what would happen if they were. I’m sure people would immediately rush to judgment and demand we feed them kale and run them out in the yard like horses.
From my experience as a psychiatric social worker, chronic stress and trauma are under-recognized as causes for obesity. I don’t even necessarily mean that trauma directly causes overeating (though it sometimes does), but just that we see over and over that people get metabolic syndromes and cardiac problems in response to living with discrimination, abuse, poverty, and deprivation. That aside, it’s pretty damn hard for some families to focus on nutrition when their daily survival is threatened.
3
My parents did everything right. Everything. They never allowed fatty or sugary food or drink in the house growing up. We ate out maybe twice a year. We ate all the vegetables, did lots of active things together, only drank water. But I've been overweight since I was 8. My mother was instantly aware and tried to curb me, get me to exercize more and eat better. She was mortified when people noticed my little pot belly and made comments to her. She started putting me on diets when I was 11. I didn't really understand, I just sensed her panic and disapproval. I would steal food from other people's houses and hide it under my bed. I would wake up in the middle of the night and eat half a jar of (organic, unsweetened) peanut butter while crying. I'm the only obese person in my family and it's nobody's fault but my own. Fifteen years later (and god knows how many diets and exercize programs and a fun little spin with EDNOS in college later) I'm still obese, an emotional eater, and horrified that people would blame my slim, health-conscious mother. Some people are just determined to savotage themselves. You can't blame parents for everything, and you can't assume you know what a parent is doing based on how their kid looks.
10
We have a child who always had an insane carving for food. Like he eats and eats, it’s never enough. He would shoplift food. We found out he has a psychological problem. Has basically no impulse control. This kids behavior was always very extreme. I’m glad after speaking with his doctor, that we should see a psychiatrist. It seems there are a number of personality disorders this can indicate. Especially, when a child is eating himself to death and you need to lock up cabinets.
3
Sounds like Prader Willi Syndrome.
1
I work in a pediatric obesity program. My opinion is that most definitely, there are differences in food seeking behaviors amongst children that appear to be present from an early age. That being said, whether or not this factor is present, parenting behaviors greatly impact their children, especially before age 11. I counsel parents to remove all sugary beverages from the household and find at subsequent visits, these beverages are still present. I ask parents to limit fast food intake or at a minimum, give them healthier options but they still are eating nuggets, fries and a soda. I ask them to take away their child’s tablet/phone/game controller after two hours and still, their children engage in hours of screen time daily. I call schools, sign their children up for free after school programs (with transportation provided) but the kids don’t show up because they didn’t want to go and the parents don’t insist. And so on.
I persist because about one in ten families actually makes the commitment necessary to have an impact on their child’s long term health. That keeps me going. But in general, we are not winning the war on pediatric obesity.
12
Maybe modern science doesn’t understand obesity but my parents and my grandparents certainly did. I remember things they used to say that I never hear anymore. Things like ‘No snacking before dinner!’ and just ‘No!’ I used to hear it a lot. Maybe modern science should try studying the ancient ways.
3
Irony is manifest when an article about obesity and the importance of eating properly and how hard that is to do because of our "obesogenic" environment starts off with a photo displaying a heaping order of french fries or a cheeseburger or similar food, as such articles invariably do.
“...modern science really doesn’t fully understand what causes obesity.” Probably more to it than excessive calories including sweetened soft drinks. But how much more is there to it?
I am old, having grown up in England after WWII. Food rationing meant no excess of food, a limited and boring diet but no malnutrition. Don't wish to go back to those days BUT can't remember seeing an obese child at school or anywhere.
4
Science knows exactly what causes obesity: a positive energy imbalance, i.e., overconsumption. The First Law of Thermodynamics ensures that this must be true. There is no other possible source for the excess energy that the body stores as fat.
4
Food rationing in Britain during and after WWII represents an interesting nutritional experiment. The cohort who grew up during this rationing are especially long-lived; their longevity is attributed at least in part, to the wartime diet they received as children and teenagers. Although calories were not restricted, people lost weight as the carbohydrate consumption increased and fat and protein intake declined. Consumption of animal products and sugar was rationed, but consumption of whole-grain bread and vegetables like potatoes and carrots increased significantly. Bread was fortified with calcium, and children also had daily rations of orange juice, milk and cod liver oil.
The nutritionists who developed the diet first tried it on themselves. This is what they found:
"The only negative results being the increased time needed for meals to consume the necessary calories from bread and potatoes, and what they described as a "remarkable" increase in flatulence from the high amount of starch in the diet. The scientists also noted that their faeces had increased by 250% in volume."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Health_eff...
This part bears repeating, for the carbs=fat crowd:
"The only negative results being the increased time needed for meals to consume the necessary calories from bread and potatoes"
1
How is this for genetics: my obese sister-in-law has two overweight adopted, non-biologically related children. My biological daughter who was absolutely ravenous as an infant and child and still has a huge appetite is now twelve and skinny. When she was hospitalized for a virus as a baby, she was treated as a spectacle by the nurses who had never seen a child feed like her.
Up until a certain age, what a child eats is pretty much entirely determined by parents. My daughter was allowed to eat to her heart's content but I didn't buy junk food. She snacked on fresh fruits and steamed veggies and knew nothing else until she began school. I call foul with the genetics argument. Kids should determine when they feel full but there is no reason to give them junk food until they are old enough to ask for it. Just because some kids are wired to be hungrier than others, doesn't mean they are wired to be overweight.
2
It's not the french fries that is the problem, it is the soda.
Do just one thing. Switch out soda (*fruit drinks, slushies, juice, Gatorade, choco-milk etc) from the typical child's diet and you make a big difference. A couple of 12 ounce cans of soda* - lunch and dinner - are more than 10% of a child's required calories per day. Replace that with water, or seltzer if you are being indulgent, and you are a long way down the road.
Keep the soda* for birthday and Holiday treats.
6
My newborn was very hungry and gained 4 pounds the first month. She was always hungry as a child. We are a healthy household. We exercise, avoid processed sugars and follow a Mediterranean diet. I tried increasing healthy fats to satisfy her hunger.
Our best efforts had little effect on her appetite. Today she actively deals with her hunger to maintain a healthy weight.
Long ago I wrote it off as the "hungry gene." My mother was obese. Our pediatrician, when asked if there was a genetic component, quipped, "The obese person in everyone's family always gets blamed."
1
All of our "fixing" is only making our children fatter. As soon as your kid thinks you think they're fat, they are much more likely to become fat. Weight control is barbaric and ineffective.
12
I nursed both my kids, both of whom were fat babies. They are now skinny adults. My observation at houses where the inhabitants (adult and kids) tend to be heavy is that you see the bags of potato chips/tortilla chips on top of the fridge/ soda (diet or not) in the fridge, Pop-tarts in the cupboards, etc. My kids had a nanny for awhile (their step-aunt) who told me that my habit of having fruit around as a snack (bowls of apples and bananas, peaches in the summer, etc.) was new to her. When she was growing up, her mom kept chips, etc. It really isn't rocket science.
11
It seems hard to make progress in this arena when so many assume blame towards parents, or some easy focus of one person or habit the blame for everything. With anything this complex, we need to weigh! so many factors, and humanize the problem.
6
Mostly ignorant parents lacking self control passing their habits downhill.
Pleasures deferred is not part of their emotional world view!
The results are palpable.
4
"Certainly, there’s some confusion and disagreement out there about what foods are healthy, even among experts."Oh please, visit any fast-food chain, some parents should be reprimanded for what is tantamount to child abuse.
7
I am impressed by the thoughtfulness & good information in so many comments. Into the mix must go the photographic & film images from previous times — perhaps up until the 1980’s which portray Americans as fairly slender — not obese — people. Some people eat a lot & some people are very active by nature. Some are not. Clearly it is the fast foods & sugars that have proliferated in the past 50 years that have altered the physical shape of Americans.
7
Yeah. agree. People stopped to prepare domestic healthy food. People should stop eating fast food, especially those who have a disposition to obesity.
2
I also wonder what the increase in environmental toxins in our soil, air, and water may h metricsave to do with it. How individuals biochemistry are affected.
Obesity is clearly a complex issue anid “ just put the doughnut down” or sugar or fat intake may not hold the whole answer.
3
I think this article brushed over the things that parents can do to help keep their children HEALTHY (managing weight is a by-product) and missed one very important one - being a role model: consuming a whole foods plant-based diet and keeping active AS A FAMILY.
8
I've come to the conclusion our food chain is poisoned, from the antibiotics pumped into our meat sources to the hormones and other chemicals fed or sprayed on to plants or into soils. As a 1950s child, I grew up in a "modern" household in terms of food.
My mother was an excellent cook and baker who also had a green thumb for growing amazing vegetables. I accompanied my father on our monthly trip to the beverage depot to purchase a case of colorful soda (pop) for consumption during the month. Sugar and flour were not enemies in the household; we had homemade baked goods available always. Potato chips were (and still are) my favorite snack food.
No one of the four of us were obese. What we did have were homemade meals every day (restaurant outings were very very few and far between), a family that sat down for dinner 7 days/week, school lunches that mom packed (though in terms of nutrition, Wonder Bread, bologna, and Oreos probably not good choices though carrot sticks were involved too), and lots of unsupervised outdoor playtime (daytime television just wasn't that interesting and of course, today's technology, non-existent).
Aside from probably being blessed with good genes that tended toward leanness, you can easily assess what's changed in 50 short years that has caused an obesity problem.
5
Many years ago, I got a wake up call from my pediatrician. I complained that all my toddler wanted to eat was bread. His response: well, who’s providing it?
It was a little kick in the pants I needed to pay more attention to the food choices I had to offer. It prompted me to swap out some of the carbs for some other healthier options. Perhaps, the pediatrician is a good first ally to help inform new parents, much like mine did.
12
Some parents may not like to hear this, but It is an indisputable fact that babies can be overfed.
https://www.babycareadvice.com/article/detail/Is_baby_overfeeding=
'Infant overfeeding is a common problem, particularly for newborn bottle-fed babies. It’s a problem that is frequently overlooked because of the flawed assumption that only fat babies are overfed babies and because of false claims that it’s not possible to overfeed a baby. As a result, gastro-intestinal symptoms linked to overfeeding can be mistakenly attributed to conditions such as colic, reflux, or milk allergy or intolerance.'
4
Parents must understand that any unnatural food has the potential for promoting obesity. Unnatural foods include any processed food (refined flour, oil, sugar) and dairy products. Dairy is an unnaturally high protein (10 times more than human breast milk), high fat food containing bovine hormones and antibiotics that can damage the gut microbiome. Humans are the only species to have the audacity to consume the milk of another species and that substance is designed to make a baby calf grow over 250 pounds in six months.
Although humans have the enzymes to digest meat, 99% of the US meat supply is derived from animals engineered and raised in completely unnatural conditions. This includes antibiotics and meat that is far higher in fat and toxins, due to CAFO forced feeding and end-of-food chain pollutants, than the meat consumed by our ancestors. So meat should also be extremely limited or off the list entirely.
A whole food plant-based lifestyle is clearly the healthiest diet on the planet and should be seriously considered by anyone who wants to avoid obesity and the chronic diseases that almost always follow.
3
Northern Europeans and other cultural groups have been consuming dairy as a major part of their diets for thousands of years, but only recently has obesity become an issue.
I am on the slim side, and although I developed an early dislike for milk on its own, I have been eating cheese almost every day all my life.
3
I almost keeled over the day I first took my three year old to public preschool. When snack time rolled around, the teacher pulled out a big bin of chopped up Oreos and fruit loops and scooped out piles of this garbage to each child. When I asked the teacher why this is what the kids were eating, she looked a little embarrassed and said that the parents provided the snacks, and this is what they provided. I spent the next few years providing a healthful snack every day for all the kids in the class.
Sports aren't much better... the grab bags parents provide after games are full of junk food.
No wonder kids are getting fat and losing their tastes for fresh, nutritious foods. There's only so much individual parents can reasonably do to fight our highly processed and junk food culture.
11
Yes, cookies for snack time. Yet, according to the venerable NYT, researchers "don't fully understand" what causes obesity.
I mean, what are those cookies...60-80 calories per serving? That's easily hundreds of excess calories per day if that's what these kids are pounding down. It's as if, I don't know, people have lost track of just how much junk we are consuming?
Good on you for stepping up and doing something about it.
1
The absolute worst thing parents can say to their kids is “I have the fat gene”. It’s game over if kids adopt that belief. Similarly, the worst thing an article on the topic can do is to suggest that fat genes can really explain current obesity levels. Alleles that increase metabolic efficiency do exist but are rather rare, and invoking these mutations to explain effects of overeating is puzzling. Articles that insist on using a genetic explanation should at least devote a paragraph to how natural selection could have resulted in the spread of such mutations in less than a generation. Would be entertaining.
6
How about exploring the rise of environmental toxins in the last generations?
That’s the missing piece to me, the rise in obesity and the rise in diagnosis of autoimmune spectrum illnesses. Toxins could interact with an individual’s genetic makeup.
2
Nice post. Also, I detect an inconsistency here among left-leaning outlets like the NYT. Normally, they tend to side with the "blank slate" concept of human nature (i.e. social factors shape and mold us like lumps of clay) over the more nativist, genetic-determinist view.
But with obesity, it seems that they are all too ready to blame genes; the obese are that way because of some immutable genetic makeup beyond their control. Apparently, a wave of mutant fat genes with huge (excuse the pun) effects swept across the population in the past 40 years, in defiance of all that is known about population genetics.
Thus, the left is often no better than the right. It too is is selectively ignorant about science in service of ideology.
2
In some public schools they sell Switch, a high sugar 100% juice carbonated beverage. It would be healthier to have a caffeine free diet soda than the Switch beverage.
This piece studiously avoids the most important aspect of a parent's responsibility: example.
Children will ultimately model what they see their adults doing. They instinctively presume that what they observe is "adult behavior", and that following suit is the way to become a full-fledged adult. Anyone who thinks that they can "make" their kids do anything is delusional. Their lives and actions, like it or not, are the blueprint for their children's habits.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
Every child cringes knowingly at this hypocritical battle cry -- and then follows the unspoken example. Very few children are self-aware enough, and then disciplined enough, to observe, recognize and reject a bad example.
For a doctor to not even mention example is both puzzling and disappointing.
3
We still don't know why when you overfeed two people both will gain weight but one will gain much more than the other. Until we get rid of the calories-in has linear relationship to weight gain myth/self control fallacy, we are only going to see this problem get worse and worse.
Meanwhile the food companies are perfecting the delivery of food that helps you release serotonin and experience food as pleasurable. No wonder the infant is voraciously hungry, s/he wants that serotonin hit.
3
PLEASE! Can we stop the psychobabble and get real in this country for a change? With a McDonald's and pizza parlor on every corner of every city in this country, can anyone say that it's a genetic predisposition that causes obesity? Take a look at any movie from the 1940s, especially one showing people walking down crowded streets. How many obese people do you see? Obesity used to be fairly rare. Now it's an epidemic in this country. Stop eating junk food and live a healthier life!
9
Parents walk a fine line between ensuring kids eat what/when they're supposed to and not obsessing over it so much that they cause their child to develop an eating disorder. Oftentimes, food becomes a way for a child to exhibit control over their lives, especially when they are depressed or feel like everything else in their environment is out of their control.
There are lots of reasons for obesity, and our American culture of supersize and instant gratification doesn't help parents.
8
I was an obese child. Weighing 220lbs at 14. A lot in 1965 compared to today's adolescent behemoths. My parents always tried to get me to lose weight but they were caught in the haze of red meat at almost every meal. Combined with unhealthy doses of margarine,butter, sour cream and mayonnaise.
I am now 165lbs, in robust health, eat smartly, am never hungry, and exercise vigorously daily.
Parents must take full throttle responsibility for their children's eating habits. Unlike me, most children will not otherwise escape the curse of adult obesity.
5
"We get sick from chronic diseases by doing what we evolved to do but under conditions by which our bodies are poorly adapted, and we then pass on those same conditions to our children, who also then get sick"- The story of the human body-.
1
This articule is disturbing. It creates a sense of powerlessness. People dont become obese naturally, it takes a lot of work to become obese in the form of excessively overeating highly processed foods.
19
Parents are role models, and have the ability to create a nutritional, experiential and physical environment. Depending on what the family eats and does, there might be an excess of calories which will be converted into fat. Parents will physically recognize this in their children and maybe in themselves, then make a decision, conscious or not, to maintain a healthy Body Mass by rescheduling the activity or food menu.. We live in a recreational eating world in the good ole USA, freedom of choice!
2
One of my kids got so thin after a stomach virus that we had to follow a feeding protocol. He was constantly "too thin" during childhood. The other? He had to learn to modify his behavior to keep from gaining too much weight.
They are close in age and ate the same things. So much for this hypothesis.
17
So much of this is true in my experience as a pediatric nutritionist. Some kids truly do have bigger appetites; some smaller. Some kids will eat anything; some not. There's another piece to the complicated picture of raising healthy kids and risk for obesity or any other medical, nutrition-based challenge: parents almost NEVER get the education they need to make effective food and feeding decisions for kids. I discuss this at length in my TEDx talk. We spend more effort educating parents on how to birth a baby (~14 hrs of training/prep), while offering little nutrition guidance or support throughout the 18 year job of nourishing kids. Access to nutrition professionals; parenting/feeding classes, etc is difficult; MDs generally don't have the training or time to dig into nutrition problems or red flags. Together, this has created a broad knowledge gap, and I believe, has put parents at a disadvantage, and our kids are paying the price. We cannot expect parents to excel at a job they are figuring out as they go along. My experience is that a parent NEVER intentionally wants to harm their child/make them fat/starve them; they are working off knowledge they have and some get entrenched in the habits that get formed over time. We place too much focus on food as the solution to healthier kids. We should be placing focus on balanced food/eating, positive feeding and an eye on child development (what to expect). This is what really sets parents and kids up for success.
15
Hmm, I sought out Lamaze childbirth classes, LaLeche League. There were child nutrition books in both organizations' lending library in addition to child rearing advice. As a result I kept cheddar cheese and bananas for a fast snack for my toddler. The Feingold diet of avoiding artificial colors and flavors was current at the time. Chocolate milk was a rarity as well as soda. My daughter, a pediatric nurse specialist, has complimented me on the diet I fed her. Gosh, I only did my best.
While genetics and individual food preferences are out of parents' control the buying of food and timing of eating in the house and out of the house is very much within parent''s control during the early years. Keeping the processed foods, sodas and high calorie foods out of the home make it easier to direct kids to eat fresh fruits and other nutritious snacks when they are hungry between good meals. I did this while my kids were small, then they hit high school and college away from home and ate whatever junk they wanted at the time. Ultimately as adults, they have returned to the type of foods most familiar....that which they ate in our home as children. Perhaps making sure the initial food choices are good ones may make a difference in the end.
14
I absolutely agree. My mother avoided giving my brother and me sugary snacks and cereals (despite our desperate begging at the grocery store) and always had a plate of cut fruit available. Despite eating all kinds of junk (and gaining a few pounds) as teenagers, we've both independently become health conscious adults. When I started to visit my brother as an adult I was surprised to see all the same healthy foods from our childhood in his kitchen (which matched my own).
8
Of course cruelty is not going to help anyone, but anyone who has had even the most rudimentary powers of observation sees obese parents modeling sedentary lifestyles and poor nutritional habits. I'm sure there's a genetic component, but in our house there aren't fun snacks unless it is a party or special occasion. It's just fruit between meals. Which no one binges on. So, even though there are obese members of our family, my husband and I and our children are not overweight. Is this correlation or causation? I don't know, but I do know that our overweight friends and family eat much heavier, fattier meals, go to fast food more often, and regularly have snacks out that are processed and unhealthy. So, come on, this isn't exactly rocket science.
5
Growing up in the 60s or 70s, we could count on one hand the number of times a bag of chips or a six-pack of coke entered the house in any given year. It was for a special occasion, such as a birthday party or watching some long-awaited movie on the Walt Disney show. Not a routine purchase.
A can of Pringles, when they first came out, would last our family of four more than a week. I have seen individuals down an entire can in one sitting, in recent years.
McDonald's was a once-per-year treat, not a staple.
12
For all the commenters who are essentially saying, how hard is it to just make your kid healthy food—I wonder how many of you actually do the bulk of your family’s grocery store shopping, cooking, and clean up? In my family, all the aforementioned tasks are undertaken by me. It’s possible I’m doing it wrong, but it takes up a huge amount of time and effort. It ain’t easy.
16
My friend’s kid is obese. Chips are ever present and they eat out all the time.
11
After you're done eating a normal sized portion of food it is physically possible to keep eating because your brain hasn't yet figured that you're full. However wait about 20 minutes your brain will get the all-full signal and you'll find that there is no way you will want more food.
The key is to eat normal-sized portions of food. When you're done, walk away.
5
Sounds good, but adults certainly have trouble with this, let alone kids. Your appetite can so easily become dysfunctional.
3
Wait too long and folks get ravenous. They inhale food to sate the hunger to be over stuffed after the 20 minutes. Misery.
The number of judgemental comments is discouraging. No one knows the answer but it is not fat shaming. Too many bullies who think they and they alone have the solution. How about a little compassion, folks. BTW, I am not obese but speaking as a caring human being.
28
agreed. And there are so many stories behind extra body fat.
5
After you're done eating a normal sized portion of food it is physically possible to keep eating because your brain hasn't yet figured that you're full. However wait about 20 minutes your brain will get the all-full signal and you'll find that there is no way you will want more food.
The key is to eat normal-sized portions of food. When you're done, walk away. Just because food is placed in front of you doesn't mean you have to eat it.
1
Don't forget underweight kids. People are even more insensitive to them because there are fewer of them and adults only warn about shaming and bullying overweight kids.
"What's the matter, doesn't your mother feed you?" This, from many of my friends' mothers.
"Hurry up and eat." "swallow it!" "Stop dawdling!" The nightly dinner time refrain.
"You need to put some weight on this child," said my pediatrician.
In eighth grade, a kid who had a crush on me still called me "flatty" In the school halls.
I couldn't get through meals without feeling nauseous, and to this day, I can't put a morsel in my mouth after I stop feeling hungry. But my eating habits are atrocious because I liked and could consume all the wrong, unhealthy things.
My mother, the arch-provocateur, comforted me by telling me that people were only jealous (but they weren't, they were just mean).
"Someday, you'll be grateful." That, at least, is true.
9
Some infants have voracious appetites and some are very difficult to manage because they are emotionally labile and irritable -- they may only shut up and settle down when sucking on something sweet and fatty like a ketchup soaked french fry. Some pets are like this too; I had a kitten that acted up, was aggressive and nasty, refused cat food, but would purr and cuddle if given milk, fish or liver. Of course, it ended up a fat, brutish creature, psychologically chained to its food dish. So yes, some children are very challenging because of their genetics and dispositions; these are the ones for whom boundaries and rule maintenance are most essential because we can all see where things will go if they get their way. But good luck . . . we never succeeded with that cat so I can well understand why parents can't with their kids. I'm so grateful my own children required next to no guidance; they were moderate and thoughtful and easy going from the get-go, apart from the expected adolescent period.
5
I think parental modeling has a lot to do with establishing "good" habits with regards to food, in particular in early childhood AFTER weaning from milk (in reference to the author's concern over her child's voracious appetite - I'm the parent of a chubby breast fed child who definitely did not end up obese). What I'm implying (with as much 'data' as was presented in the article) is that parents don't get off that easy, blaming genetics for obesity. While I don't believe in absolutes, I do believe that people, parents and children, have more control than they may sometimes want to believe.
5
Children should be free to eat as much as they want at mealtimes, eat the same food as parents, be forbidden to snack between meals, and offered a variety of veggetables and fruits, as well as all the other food groups. Beyond that--what can you do? Parents should not attempts to control children's body weights, only to instill healthy eating habits.
12
I understand the author's point about how parents are not always responsible for their children's weight issues, and there is no panacea for the scourge of obesity. However, barring the exceptional cases (metabolic, genetic, medical variables that skew general rules), bad eating habits are a problem of parents' making. When I had my first child, I remember being shocked at the fact that all other kids CONSTANTLY snacked while sitting in their strollers. This grazing food culture (heavily reliant on processed foods) sets children for a lifetime of problems. (Like mom mom before me) I established set mealtimes for my kids the moment they were old enough to sit at a table and eat relatively solid food. They have a massive homemade breakfast, a lunch that I pack for them to take to school, and a proper dinner. If they get hungry in between, they grab a readily available fruit, and I tell them to wait until dinner is ready. Our school asks that we pack our kids a snack; my eight-year-old told me, about a month into the school year, "Mom, I don't understand why we need a snack. I am not hungry two hours after eating breakfast." And like that, he just stopped bringing snacks to school. Both his brother and he are healthy, sporty, muscular kids.
The goal is not to blame parents but to educate them to set up healthy eating patterns for kids. One golden rule I follow is this: I never feed my kids something that I wouldn't eat myself or that has a shelf-life longer than 3 months.
6
3 months? Your kids don’t get any potatoes, squash, or apples? No cereal or flour? No pasta, nuts, or seeds? That must be a very challenging diet to keep.
6
I love how this self-congratulating story conveniently bypasses the toddler years when few kids have the patience to sit down to consume a massive home-cooked meal three times a day so that they don't need to snack. I hope she will return to enlighten us what she did when her 2yr old consumed two spoonfuls of soup for lunch and is tantruming from hunger 1 hr later.
6
It's pretty self-congratulatory, but I've got to say, I got through the toddler years without carrying food everywhere. I've seen people carrying multiple snacks for their kids going to the park for an hour--really, the kid isn't going to starve if they are without food for an hour. The grazing culture is not particularly healthy, particularly since most people take it as an excuse to eat constantly, but the food that is consumed isn't always healthy or in very small portions.
2
My oldest child prefers fruit and veggies to almost everything else. She dislikes food topped with sauce or butter or mayo. When she was three, we took her to get a cookie from a party buffet and she requested her fresh fruit instead. Her dad and I were proud that we had instilled healthy habits in our child. Then our second child was born, and her food behaviors were entirely different. Turns out that *we* hadn't done much of anything; our kids are born with preferences of their own.
35
A perfect storm. Massive amounts of cheap, processed salty, fatty, sugary snacks, cheaper and easier to obtain than real food. Lack of exercise, too much screen time, and a massive hidden extinction of microbes over generations that have altered our metabolisms. Antibiotics, C-sections, obsession with disinfectants (in non-hospital settings) have, according to Dr. Martin Blaser, author of "Missing Microbes" led to a shift in the very health outcomes of millions of humans as we have separated ourselves, unknowingly from our microbial birth rights. We don't even know what we're missing, but we know how we're suffering. If our children and adults change their diets and exercise and STILL don't see improvements (and most don't) you are looking at other forces. It's only a matter of time before researchers figure out what we're missing and how to replace it. I couldn't wait. https://etcfmt.com
1
Home making and stay-at-home mothering used to be revered. Now it is scorned and shamed. When asked " are you working??" I have yet to hear any woman say "Yes- I am raising my kids and running my home" if they are not gainfully employed. Cooking is a hard job- ask any celebrity chef on TV.
Moms are too busy at work to have any time to plan meals and cook for their families. When they come home they do what's easy - high fat take- out, microwave meals, salty fat snacks, etc. because they are exhausted! It's easier to hand your kid a bag of treats than to start a cooking project after an 8 hour day. I don't blame them.
The results should not be surprising: over fed and undernourished kids who struggling with obesity and diabetes at alarming rates and their guilty parents.
9
Broiling some chicken or fish and adding a steamed vegetable and maybe a little potato, pre-made rice or bread, this is as easy, or easier than picking up McDonalds. I worked full time, sometimes took classes, was a single mother for a lot of their lives, and very seldom picked up fast food for my kids. I planned ahead as most parents do. Home cooked food is also much less expensive. (Some people actually like McDonalds. Ask the President. He can have anything he wants cooked for him, too. Go figure.)
5
Nice assumptions. I’m an attorney and mom of two who cooks five nights a week. Chicken cacciatore and salmon bowls are on the menu this week. Meanwhile some of the helicopter SAHMs I know are prone to giving in to their kids’ demands for processed “kid” foods. I know one who carries snacks in a giant bag everywhere she goes with them, because to her that’s being a good mom. And there are plenty like her. And plenty like me.
7
Oh please. I work full-time and then some, and I manage to plan menus, shop, and cook real food every night. You know what helps? That my husband, who also works full-time, does at least 50% of the household and parenting work. If I had to do all the domestic labor and all the child-rearing in addition to my paid work, then sure, I guess I'd feed the kids more processed foods.
4
Go into any fast food restaurant at lunch time. Those kids didn't drive themselves. It's an addiction to salt, fat, and sugar that is being passed from generation to generation. I'm not a sociologist. I'm just looking around me.
14
I fully understand that American society is the enemy when it comes to health. In a country where roughly 1/3rd of the population is obese, and 1/3rd is overweight, living a healthy lifestyle is difficult. Because we live in a majority non-normal bodyweight society, what the average person is doing is probably going to be unhealthy. Add on top of that that often fat people want you to join them in their unhealthy ways so that they can fatten you up to their levels, and you sometimes feel like you are under siege. I visit my in-laws during the holidays and it is a non-stop battle to try to eat healthily. Processed foods, eating out at burger and fries places, sugary foods, etc... When it comes to your children, you have to really work to overcome the societal pressures to join the fatty lifestyle, but you have to do it because a healthy, active lifestyle is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give them.
8
"When both parents and children are overweight, that’s probably at least in part evidence of a common genetic predisposition."
Someone needs to relearn what evidence is. One cannot conclude, at least with any measure of intellectual integrity, that an observation is "probably" evidence. It is also possible that a parent who could not control their eating has taught by example their child the same poor eating habits.
15
Like almost everything with parenting, the casual observer of a family at one moment in time cannot possibly fully understand the dynamics of that family. In my nuclear family of four, everyone has a different, health-related dietary need. Some of them conflict. It takes A LOT of time, A LOT of effort, and no small amount of money for all of us to eat decently every day. We don't always get it right. Please remember, you rarely know the whole story, and everyone is balancing their own burdens.
19
The February 2107 Scientific American magazine has an article "The Exercise Paradox" (page 26) that is an eye opener. It shows how tightly constrained human metabolism is for all humans no matter where they live and how hard their lives are. Hunter-gatherers, arctic herdsman, Polynesians, to a typical US suburban family ALL have the same metabolic requirements within a few percentage points. The human brain is the biggest use of energy and oxygen ( one out of every 4 breaths is for the brain alone). That sets our human metabolic engine faster than most other primates and other animals.
The end result of the study showed that exercise is largely irrelevant to our metabolic needs. Sure, the top athletes burn a lot of calories but only during peak training and not for long stretches of time.
Bottom line: restricting your caloric content is the only sure way to obtain and maintain a healthy weight. Exercise is great and does nice things to your body but it does not help with weight loss. Neither does what you eat. You CAN eat fast food, pasta, rice, potatoes, butter, red meat, cheese etc but just not very much of them. I restricted these foods, ate less, and manged to lose 25% of my body weight and maintain it over the past couple of years. It worked for me, something that a popular weight loss program could not do.
Can we get kids to eat less while away from the house? JP Tolins comment here is spot on.
10
I have never found fast food to be cheaper then food made from scratch. Whenever we as a family have eaten fast food it was always over $25.00 for a family of 4 or 5. I had 3 kids. Each ate differently. The first two were in the 99th percentile on the growth chart, the last one was so small he didn't even make the chart. We rarely ate fast food, didn't keep snack foods in the house, we ate dinner together. The first kid was impossibly picky. Especially disliked tomatoes and peppers, still does today. Second kid would eat anything you put in front of him, never met a food he didn't like. I think he ate enough for two! The last one just wouldn't eat anything green. We did not make food a battlefield. Either they ate or they didn't, but it wasn't a diner and they could have fruit or some cheese, but that was it. As you can imagine they learned to cook for themselves at an early age! All 3 are fine today, no weight problems. When they were babies we let them eat as much as they wanted until about age 2 and all three were formula fed after the first week or so.
1
It may not be much cheaper in money, but it's definitely cheaper in time. When you're working 11 hours a day on your feet, then have to come home and take care of kids, you're often too exhausted to cook. And that's especially if nobody ever taught you how to cook, and then you could very well end up spending the cost of ingredients plus an hour+ making something that comes out ruined and wasted and nobody wants to eat. Fast food is cheap and it's easy.
12
Oh, hogwash. Even an 11-hour-per-day worker can throw a turkey breast in the oven for 75 minutes and use the meat throughout the week. Or make a batch of spaghetti sauce (took me 20 min to brown the meat and mix the ingredients for a giant vat of it the other day) or prep vegetables for a week's worth of salads/veggie platters.
I can broil chicken breasts and steam frozen vegetables in the time it would take to detour to McDonald's on my way home from work. So can most people. If nothing else, scramble some eggs or cook some oatmeal.
5
Said a mother of her newborn in this article, "“We tried for five weeks and I had five different lactation consultants. He wouldn’t be patient enough to wait for milk to let down.” Since newborns aren't born with patience the hypothesis here is the mother couldn't tolerate her infants frequent crying and thus wanted to feed the baby more often. Perhaps the mother was reinforcing the crying behavior with food, which overtime could lead to food acting as a coping response and result in emotional overeating. Just an idea.
8
Have you ever breastfed a newborn? It sort of sounds like you haven't. Breastmilk won't come out without a brief period of anticipatory suckling. A baby who won't nurse long enough to trigger letdown is going to grow hungry and frantic. A mom who offers the breast has no way to force baby to nurse--breasts aren't bottles that drip out milk whether or not baby sucks. And a baby who is crying for some reason other than hunger is likely to keep crying until the problem (diaper, gas, whatever) is fixed. So I have no idea how you imagine this mom could be "reinforcing the crying behavior with food," unless you have never nursed a newborn (or did so long enough ago that you have forgotten what it was like).
11
RJM: Breast feeding isn't always successful due to a variety of factors. I was lucky in being able to do so but would never, ever judge what another mother does about it. Even if she can but chooses not to, the baby can get the right nutrients from formula. In the 1940's and 1950's in American breast feeding was shunned. Millions of people were just fine.
6
Thanks for your comment. I couldn't breastfeed thanks to lack of letdown that nothing helped. Boy did I get some terrible treatment from the lactation consultant until the problem was discovered. My baby was healthy and loved and fed.
2
My parents were both so skinny as children that their doctors worried and their Depression-era parents panicked. Back in the cold-war days, my mom was fed lard at every opportunity. Dad was given milkshakes with raw eggs in them, and his mother breaded and deep-fried every vegetable he ate. They stayed skinny well into their senior years.
Mom and Dad raised me with home-cooked meals, made from scratch, with vegetables on every plate - most often ones we grew ourselves. We sat down to family meals, and I was required to clean my plate. I stayed skinny and remain so to this day.
Our kids are so skinny that the pediatricians are always fretful at our checkups. We often let them eat junk because we are so worried when they don't eat at all. We are a busy dual-income family with some terrible meal habits and far too much takeout pizza in our diets. Nonetheless, the kids stay skinny.
Everyone in my family is skinny with no effort, no matter what choices we make on diet and exercise. It's just the roll of the genetic dice. I'm absolutely certain this is the same for kids and adults who are heavy. I benefit from a lot of positive and totally false assumptions about my self-discipline and healthy habits. The reverse happens to people who are overweight.
40
My family tends to be overweight to obese. I am overweight by about 20 lbs. My husband and his family are very thin, and he is rarely sick. We have been married for 5 years, and I am about to turn 50. He’s 58.
My husband eats a lot more than I do, but he doesn’t gain weight. I gain weight easily if Im not careful, but the food my body craves changes the more time we live together. My immune system and gut have changed since marrying. I’m sick less and have fewer gastrointestinal issues, and I am finding it a little easier to keep weight off. I think my microbiome is being overtaken by his healthy microbiome.
6
In 1970, 14.5% of the population was obese. Currently, 36.5% of the population is obese. Are you going to try to argue that the change was due to our genes evolving this rapidly over 45 years? There are also huge differences in obesity rates by state. Are there genetic differences between those in Colorado and West Virginia? The problem is not our genes, it is our lifestyles.
3
Matt J., I think you are making a very simple argument and have assumed that my argument is equally simple. It is not a binary choice between lifestyle and genes. The same lifestyle will affect people differently, based on their genetics and - just to throw another variable in the mix - their microbiome. You can put every 25-year-old in America on the same jogging program. They will all get healthier, but some are going to still be lousy, slow runners, some are going to be amazing, and most will be on a continuum in the middle. I am not sure if you will hear this, as you seem to wish to argue against a straw man.
8
I work for the Catering Industry and my pet peeve is the children's meal. It is always chicken fingers and french fries, You can spend a half million dollars on a wedding and your children will eat chicken fingers and french fries. What makes people think that children crave fried food?
17
People give that to kids as soon as they can eat solid food. Exclusively- they’re taught that’s what’s kids eat. We avoided giving ours ANY fried food and no nuggets or chicken fingers for the first few years and they don’t crave them at all.
1
Well, serve them the green beans and ribs and watch them go into the trash untouched while the intended recipient is tantruming under the table. I don't go to a wedding to have battles with my kids over vegetables. Absolutely give them the french fries so that we can respect the bride & groom with good behavior and maybe even have some adult conversation. Let's save the Brussels sprouts for meals at home.
1
For heavens sake, stop whining! There is nonsense in the article. Breast feeding on demand does not make fat children. Chips, fries, too much tv and too late tv promotes obesity. Parents are responsible for their children’s nutrition, their exercise and their bedtime routine. Childhood obesity may well be a complex issue but it is not a mystery.
18
Science does not support your assertions. The article reflects the current state of the scientific literature.
I also do not think that the article states that "reast feeding on demand" makes children fat. In fact, I think the opposite - trust your instincts, as the science is not clear.
10
I have been on the front line of the childhood obesity epidemic for 18 years. We are the oldest non profit organization in the United States assisting families and children who struggle with often morbid obesity. Parents play the most crucial role as they are the decision makers and trend setters within their families.
I just wrote a piece for our collaborative effort with groups like the American Heart Association, the PTA and others for Media Planet about the success of one family because a mom was finally scared enough by her doctors warnings. http://www.modernwellnessguide.com/lifestyle/how-louie-yuhasz-changed-hi...
LouiesKids.org has tried dozens of methods over the years to help overweight kids, what we know is that without the full family committing to a healthier lifestyle nothing will change and obesity will continue to plague generations to come.
8
I watched my obese brother-in-laws wife feed their toddler cookies, cake, candy, junk food, fried foods, and soda. Today as a young adult she is massively obese as well and diabetic. The apple does not fall far from the tree. The MOTHER caused this. Period.
18
Was the father not there to try and stop it?
13
I am the parent of two children, one born to me and one adopted. The one born to me is like my husband and me, thin. The one we adopted came home as an underweight toddler with a voracious appetite, out-ate me as a toddler and since, was provided access to unlimited "healthy" food to sate that appetite, is extremely active and now a young teen has struggled with overweight for a few years. We do everything "right" with regard to activity, diet, screens, family meals, etc., and yet she I suspect will always be heavy. We worry, but we don't focus on weight because that's counterproductive. We don't keep junk in the house (despite the pediatrician's implication to the contrary), but she gets junk food from her friends. Genetics? Early deprivation? Both? Hormones? Toxic exposure to hormone-mimicking chemicals in her country of origin and/or at home? Who knows.
I was a thin child, as was my husband and our son (a thin young adult). As middle-aged adults, husband and I now find we must be more careful. Our daughter was only thin when deprived before we got her. It ain't that simple.
44
That makes a lot of sense — I believe there’s a decent body of evidence that early food deprivation is correlated with later overweight or obesity. Apparently the body can be trained quite easily to pack on weight, which would have obviously survival benefits once an evolutionary sense.
5
Sure, obesity is a complex issue, and yes there are some examples of extreme situations like newborns with voracious appetites. But the simple truth is for every obese child you see, there is an obese parent standing next to them creating the daily family menu. If you want to treat child obesity, you have to first be honest about Mommy and Daddy obesity.
11
I was a chubby child. My parents and siblings were not. Why? I don't know but my mother worked with our doctor to devise a healthy diet and I was encouraged, always, to eat well. I am the only one in my family with weight issues which began when I was a baby according to my mother. She said I was always hungry. Most of my life I have been able to maintain a normal weight but as I have aged it has become harder. It is my responsibility and I definitely do not blame my parents at all.
11
This is NOT true. I am naturally thin as is my husband. My daughter was determined by our pediatrician to be obese at 6 months (while she was being exclusively breastfed). So, maybe we are an extreme, but I don't think so. I have never struggled with my weight nor has my husband, but my 2.5 year old is already on the road to struggle. And, she'll have to bear all the judgement of people like you. I wish I knew what to do, but I don't.
13
I do stand corrected. I wrote that "for EVERY obese child you see, there is an obese parent..." That is plainly not true, as you say. There is so many unknowns about how our bodies work, no one can make absolute statements like that. However, I will still argue that childhood obesity is often as much a family problem as it is an individual problem.
Dr. Klass asked "...does better nutritional AWARENESS by parents actually translate into children eating in a healthy way?" I would change that to "...does better nutritional BEHAVIOR by parents actually translate into children eating in a healthy way?"
I think the answer is yes.
2
Thank you so much for this. I appreciate your emphasis on the complexity of obesity.
8
My mother tells the story of the pediatrician insisting I be put on a diet as a toddler and then finding me sitting in front of the refrigerator eating something or other not long after being given a meal. She was a petite 5'2" woman. Meals were always healthy in our house but food has been an "issue" every day of my 67 years. I'm convinced food and eating is a very complex issue.
17
I agree! My mother had an eating disorder and wouldn't allow us to eat for extended periods of time, like all day Sunday. When I went to a friend's house, I would gorge on everything available, which was usually chips and snack cakes and soda. I became a chubby child who was very very hungry much of the time. Sounds like an extreme story, but I've met others with similar experiences.
3
I know many parents who ply their kids with food. Pretty soon the kids physiques resemble those of the parents, which tend to be obese.
It's not that complicated, lay out reasonable portions of decent food at mealtime and that's it. No rewarding kids with snacks between meals.They don't need it. Food is not to be elevated to the status of "reward". It's just food. Like with the car, it's just gas. You take it when you need it. Society needs to stop already with the emphasis on food, with articles and tastings, and TV shows and food fairs and books. It's crazy. It's just food! Stop trying to turn it into art.
4
But it is complicated. That's the point. Some kids can eat all kinds of bad food and never get fat. Others can eat only the best and yet struggle with obesity all of their life. Calories in, calories out, is not the way it works.
5
That's true, but we shouldn't think it's ok to feed our thin children bad food simply because they aren't overweight. People should eat healthy diets, no matter what they look like. Just like they should exercise even if it doesn't have much impact on their weight--it has other benefits.
I was maybe five or six years old when my mother looked at me in my bathing suit and said "you have to start eating your potatoes and bread and put some meat on those bones". How I wish she had not. I was a skinny little girl and her belief that my fussy insistence on eating only salad and broccoli was making me look sickly, would color my adult eating habits forever. This was the 1950s and perhaps living through the depression made her feel that eating everything available was necessary. I'd love to think that after all these years mothers know how to feed their children a reasonably healthy way. But what parent has the time or ability to measure their child's activity level, let alone make sure they eat to a proscribed diet, anymore than my Mom, who had five kids to corral. Encouraging a taste for 'good' foods is about as much as I would expect.
7
Kids are no longer allowed to roam free after school in many places. There are examples of parents who have had the police called when they allow their children to wander and play in their neighborhood, an activity most of us did when we were kids. This must have a detrimental effect on the activity level of many kids. Parents are actually being peer pressured and in some occasions legally obligated to be helicopter parents.
Also, the ridiculous rise of snacking during youth sports is perhaps a cause or a symptom of the obesity epidemic. Parents are forced to sign up to bring snacks for 5 year old children playing soccer for 40 minutes. Some parents bring full sized gatorades, donuts, and the ubiquitous Goldfish. God forbid a child be beyond arms reach of Goldfish for any period of time. This would not have happened in the 1980s. The kids must have dreaded when I would show up with orange slices.
I have also seen that many modern day parents will make their kids something else for dinner, if their kids do not like what the grownups are eating. So, you have kids who essentially eat pasta and chicken nuggets even when their parents take the time to make a real meal. I never saw this as a child in the late 70s and early 80s. We make our kids eat what the grownups are eating and they have not yet died of starvation.
28
You nailed it 100%. We had a soccer team with several obese little kids and the mildly obese parents would bring donuts to a 4pm practice- right before dinnner. And I’m in a FB group with 1000s of moms who are adamant that no kid will eat anything you make for dinner and that pasta and nuggets every night is fine.
1
Part of the issue is the lack of nutrition education in schools. So many parents have bad eating habits, which they pass on to their children and so on. If we incorporated lessons on healthy nutrition into our school curricula, we might be able to interrupt that chain. I used the free nutrition programs offered by the dairy industry (which, by the way, did not classify ice cream as an "extra") and adapted them to create several different units for my second graders. We learned how to read nutrition labels in order to calculate the amount of sugar, fat, etc. in a sample meal — perfect for practicing math skills. Most of my nutrition units had a homework component so that parents could be part of the nutrition conversation at home. I had a number of students who got very excited about "teaching" their parents how to pack a healthy lunch (and it didn't involved Lunchables — which are an abomination!). Until we actively teach people HOW to eat healthy, our population will continue to get sicker.
4
I think it's great to put more emphasis on eating healthy like that. I think a huge issue with not eating healthy, both at school and at home, is the influence of parents and boredom. Some students might be so bored and tired in school they don't bother to think of healthy nutrition enough to make a large change in eating habits. And they might be so exhausted from teaching that they aren't very receptive to further teaching involving nutrition. I also think that if the cafeteria food isn't very appealing, that students just stress themselves out more and seek unhealthy alternatives to satisfy some taste requisite, either with junk food at school or waiting to eat until they get out (a terrible idea). That could easily lead to getting even more junk food out of starving throughout the morning. I think if schools encourage the fact that you could have a much better time at school just by eating healthier and exercising regularly a lot of the students would not only do that but be much healthier.
1
Kids learn from parents their core habits- eating, is a major one. Two of the best ways to lose weight? Be around skinny people and use smaller dishes. This is not hocum but proven. So if parents are obese, their is a greater likelihood the kids will be too.
3
I shop for vintage items and the difference in the size of plates, bowls and cups sold before the 1980s to now is extremely striking.
Juice glasses used to hold four ounces, if that, not the 16-20 guzzlers that are sold today. What passes for a bread plate now was a dinner plate in the 1930s. Even old Martini glasses held about 2-3 ounces of fluid, not 8 ounces as now. What a nation of obnoxious gluttons we've become.
4
For most adults, the two hardest things to do are:
Eat when you're hungry and sleep when you're tired.
Babies don't need to be taught this. But they sure can be influenced by the adults around them.
9
My kids have always been really skinny — 10th percentile for weight, sometimes 25th. Sometimes I’ve felt concerned and people comment, ie you can see all the bones. I let my kids eat whatever they want: lunch dessert, after school snack, dinner dessert. And yet, they’re the thin ones . . .
There’s just so much we don’t know. And sometimes I think you’re better to have that buttery croissant you crave, or the McDs, than a bowl of pasta or even several pieces of whole grain bread.
Yeah, parents get blamed for everything. People love to do that. I got blamed for my kids’ learning disorders. Also, the moms of overweight kids love to look down on what I feed my kids but, you know, that’s not my area of challenge. We each have our own challenges.
17
My son's pediatrician said that his weight is perfectly normal. He said that so many kid's are overweight now that most people see normal weight kids and think they are skinny, when, in fact, that's just the fact that people's perspectives are distorted.
2
Just wanted to add about breastfeeding and kids knowing their own mind. My skinny daughter was scary picky. She refused ALL solids until 13 or 14 months. Everything. (Please note: that was a lot of work for me, her mother — she only nursed at the breast — she spat pacifiers out — could scream for 5 hours if denied the breast). Then she just went for meat and potato stew, at 14 months, crushed with a fork. Kids definitely have there own wants and personality from the start.
Being picky can be a powerful part of the equation of maintaining body weight, as can sickness. I easily maintained my body weight for years simply by getting seriously ill (with colds or flu or stomach flu) every single winter. Sometimes I think obese people don’t realize how these things can be part of the equation. It’s not all about iron discipline or “clean” eating.
8
Regular, vigorous exercise (many people only go through the motions) and good choices about the food you eat work every time. If you are willing to adopt a really healthy lifestyle, you will be healthy. There is literally nothing more important than your health, but look at the typical American. This article is pretty wishy washy but seems to want to provide folks with an excuse for being obese. Don't buy it. You can be fit.
2
Yes they do. Very much. They are like the largest influence when it comes to diet. Some kids won't know better and won't know when is a right time to eat because their parents are the ones constantly deciding when they eat and what they eat. And kids will just accept this as a natural routine, even the most grown up adult ones. And if there is little to no resistance met with presented food parents might think what they are feeding them is fine and normal, easily leading to one too many meals or more every week. Some parents are just so terrible and not smart that they are largely to blame for their kids being obese.
1
With so many apparent experts in the comments section, it's a wonder any of us are still overweight!
While it's wonderful that many of you have raised children who are healthy eaters with no weight problems, you haven't cracked the code for the whole population, and you can't pat yourselves on the back too much for having kids who weren't genetically predisposed to being on the heavier end of the spectrum. And for all those so helpfully pointing out that dried beans and vegetables are cheaper than McDonald's...time is money. Kitchen equipment is money. Getting yourself (and your kids) to a decent grocery store is money. Knowledge of basic nutrition and cooking skills? Usually costs money to acquire.
34
It's all worth it because it's healthier than just going out to McDonad's every other day instead of learning to cook healthy for you kids. And if you are careful it can actually be cheaper to eat healthy than going for fast food. Just try going to Subway and then making your own sub in a similar fashion. The money save will be great.
2
Beans and rice can cook in one pot. Not that difficult. Got a smart phone (oh yes they have), then you can look on youtube for cooking lessons. No more excuses.
4
If you don't have the wherewithal to shop for and prepare decent, wholesome food, then you shouldn't produce offspring. Lining up those prerequisites should not be considered optional.
"Oh, I can't afford a crockpot or bus fare to Walmart, but I guess I"ll go ahead and have three kids anyway and just feed them McDonald's." Mother of the Year.
2
It is absolutely simple. Children do not feed themselves. Fat children are fat because their parents feed them too much and/or nutrient deficient, processed foods, which wreak havoc on their developing microbiomes causing inflammation, among other issues.
4
A silly question, really. What Tolstoy left out of the now famous sound bite to his opening sentence in in his novel Anna Karenina -- "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" -- is that all families are cults. Each and every one.
From the very best (however you define that term) to the very worst (however you define that term), and everything in between. It is where all of us learn how to desire, dress, role play, and define success, which really defines by default what constitutes failure. There is *nothing* like the family to teach a child to eat too much. It's a legitimate conspiracy, and one that mom and dad got from their mom and dad, ad infinitum...
2
Parents can and should provide healthy foods in the home, but as the author points out, that is simply not enough.
The availability of junk food to kids is nearly continuous. My children's teachers have been asking for families to donate individually packaged candies, juices, sodas, and treats--not just for twice a year parties--but for classroom rewards handed out daily since they began school more than a decade ago. Coaches, clubs, and other programs do the same. Kids don't even recognize these as "treats"--they are standard. Parents who bring healthy "treats" in place of the requested "post-soccer game sodas and chips" may receive gracious thanks from a few parents, but they'll be disparaged by others. Lots of people simply do not have the social capital to take the stand they need to even when they know sliced oranges and water would be better. We've not just normalized poor eating choices, we enforce them.
Turning this around doesn't just mean feeding your kid a good breakfast anymore. It means things like volunteering to be the PTA parent, setting nutrition standards for school events, and then dealing with waves of backlash as people call you a "nutrition Nazi" because you requested non-food prizes for the classroom events or suggested a school spaghetti dinner as a fundraiser instead of chocolate bar sale. And a lot of people lack the time, education, and money to fight this battle (not to mention that social capital I spoke of earlier.)
18
Cue the self-righteous responders who just did x, y, and z.
My daughter is overweight. She's never had soda in my house or her dad's. Forays to fast food restaurant are few and far between, and I prepare most meals at home from whole ingredients. She gets a hand-packed, healthy lunch every day.
I have a few theories about why she is overweight. She's adopted, and it's likely she was starved in utero (look up the studies done on the children of Dutch women who were pregnant during the Nazi occupation). She also really gravitates toward fat -- her favorite snack right now is avocado toast.
What she doesn't eat is a lot of sugar. Hence, I don't worry that much about metabolic illnesses, which she shows no signs of having. Being overweight is not so bad without the accompanying risk of insulin resistance, and there is a lot of research out there now that shows that fructose is the main culprit in our developing that.
None of that prevents her annual checkup from being a nightmare -- for us both, since we both are shamed. We've learned to grin and bear it.
12
oh my goodness no. The article example given (a nursing infant) is **Completely Different Scenario** from the picture of the toddler groping from a heap of french fries provided by a parent. This article is specious clickbait.
Fact: We have all seen parents offer crazily large portions of calorie heavy foods to their kids. Just go to McDonalds and watch it happen. Horrible for those kids and worse it sets expectations in those overfed kids that will plague them when they are adults forever.
23
Yep. Even when you try to select a healthy choice at a non-fast food restaurant, the portions are insane. If you order milk, they’ll bring you a cup of milk equivalent to about 3 servings of milk. Don’t even get me started on pop in restaurants...we let my 7yo order pop on special occasions and they often bring 20 oz or more and then repeatedly offer refills! And look shocked when I turn them down. I have to dump half the serving and aggressively turn away the refills.
And yes I know we could have a ‘no pop’ policy but we teach that you can have certain foods in reasonable quantities once in a while if you eat healthy the rest of the time. It works for us and I think provides good skills for when kids are on their own with these choices!
5
The good Dr. probably has an excellent bedside manner, he could visit a sick man who smoked a pack a day, was 200 lbs overweight and drank like a fish and commiserate with him about the effects of society.
However, the audience here is thousands and he does them a disservice.
If - as parents, we keep a fridge full of garbage foods, if the kids learn that McD's is a treat, if we refuse to role-model health behavior and aerobic activities, then yes, we are making our kids fat.
The consequences go far beyond esteem, we are damning them to a much higher risk of early death and an uncomfortable life.
Don't fool us - just because some factors are beyond our control does not mean we should not work hard on those factors we can control. Get up right now and look in your fridge.
22
She. The doctor/author is a woman. Shocking, I know.
4
Why would you automatically assume a physician in this day and age, named "Perri," especially, would be male? (Of note, she most emphatically is not.)
4
SHE! Why do you assume the doctor is male? Dr. Perri Klass is a woman, also known for her writings on knitting.
2
I have raised 4 children and am a doctor specializing in kidney diseases, often caused by complications of obesity. Here are the rules for raising fit children:
No fast food ever.
No soda in the house. Children have been living on water for thousands of years.
Pack their lunch every day.
Sit down family dinner every night. Meats, fish, vegetables. Fruit for dessert. It's a lot of work, but worth it.
Talk about nutrition and lead by example.
Cakes and ice cream are for special occasions only: birthdays, Thanksgiving..
Get them into sports and activities that require exertion.
And yes, limit TV, computer time.
Not easy but nothing worthwhile is.
66
Yes! (Although you might have a problem with the fruit for dessert thing - some treats can and should be allowed.)
Honestly, healthy eating is within the kid's - and the family's - best interest. Leaving aside chronic health and metabolic problems and their necessary treatments, which can cause everything from obesity or lack of appetite or even the ability to tolerate certain foods, a well-rounded diet is best. Unfortunately, some people struggling financially or living in what are termed "food insecure" neighborhoods can't always do this - the healthier food, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, is expensive at the grocery store and these customers often cannot afford to purchase it. Hence the junk and high-calorie foods, which are cheaper but cause all kinds of problems. People should not have to make those kinds of choices. Healthy food should be available for purchase for all, but that's a whole other article.
5
Exactly. It is not easy, it takes deliberate intent and focus on the parents part. My husband and I come from families with rich food traditions, but we want our son to have a lifetime of happy eating. We started with "Its Not About Nutrition" and built our food habits around the principals promoted by Dina Rose. Rather than being a nutritionist or dietician - Rose is a Food sociologist who believes food culture matters, and parents get to decide their family food culture.
More on Rose is here http://itsnotaboutnutrition.com/about/
Now instead of shying away from treats, we talk it out with our son and let him choose. Treat of the day at breakfast? Hey kid, it is your choice.. but we are going to walk you though it so you are prepared to make your own food choices when we are not sitting at the table with you. Opening up the conversation has helped us move away from the food shaming/scolding of our upbringing toward something more practical for our children's food environment.
3
The word "dessert" stood out to me here. I've met a lot of people, from a lot of cultures, who think dessert is a default part of a full meal. Maybe it was in the past, but is it still? Why? Why build a trap into every mealtime and set yourself and your kids up for battles and failure? Dessert as a concept is a liability. If you don't have the time, money or creativity to come up with a healthy dessert for every meal, but your kids expect dessert, you're gonna start falling back on sweets. Save yourself the trouble and eliminate dessert as an expectation.
I grew up in a culture that believed in the 3-course meal: soup, main dish, dessert. However, for one reason or another, in my family we never did dessert (probably because my mom was working 2 jobs and too busy to count courses - she just made sure we were fed). So I didn't have the expectation, and I didn't pass it on to my own family either. I have 2 kids now. We don't do dessert. We don't snack either. We eat 3 square meals a day, and that's it, and nobody is hungry or whiny in-between because they know what to expect. We do have occasional treats - cakes for birthdays, ice cream by the carousel in the summer, we bake cookies together. They know that no foods are forbidden, but they know why we have to limit some. Plus, the limit makes them so much more special when they do happen.
This isn't easy. It will be even less so as they get older and more independent. But it's not completely out of our control either.
8
My daughter was ultra-hungry from the second she was born. Early on I thought that I had to be doing something wrong because she seemed to want to breast feed all the time. I ended up pumping milk and measuring her intake - and when I reported on the rather dramatic amounts to my doctor, he said I must have measured incorrectly. Uh, no, I didn't. Twenty years on of careful nutrition (duh, please don't talk to me about fruits and vegetables ) and physical activity - not to mention endocrinologists, trainers, nutritionists, therapists, camps ...etc. - she still has profound difficulties with her weight. By the way, she has a sibling who has none of these problems. Trying to address this issue while not being conditional is excruciating. Trying to encourage a positive self- and body-image is no walk in the park either. Every year there would be the annual letter home from school and follow-up meeting with a nurse and counselor with their telling me how "concerned" they were with my daughter's health. Concerned? Wasn't clear to me what they were going to do to help - except judge me and my husband as irresponsible parents. After 20+ years of observing and trying to address this pernicious problem, I am convinced that the health care community (including insurance companies) is still not aware how complex obesity is. The ever-changing mix of genetic and metabolic factors as well as psychological and cultural ones makes this - still - impossible.
85
Oh, thank you so much for this! I have a feeling I'm on the same road and it makes me so sad. I don't want to have to be controlling but I also want to shield my little girl from all of this stigma. Just reading these comments makes me want to cry. People are so black and white and the medical professionals are so skeptical. Yes, my baby was breastfed on demand exclusively for 6 months and she was classed as "obese" at her 6 month appointment. She still is. I give her no processed foods ever. NONE. And she loves vegetables and fruit and she is always, constantly hungry. I have never known her to be satiated. If you kept feeding her, she would keep eating. Yet, all these helpful posters would have me believe it's so SIMPLE. They have never walked even a few meters in my shoes. Also, why do I always feel like I have to add that I am naturally thin? And have never struggled with my weight? I'm already tired of having this fight and I know it's going to follow me for the duration. My poor little daughter....
15
Most medical professionals know nothing about nutrition or energy metabolism or the interplay between what you eat and what your endocrine system does in response.
May I suggest you consider https://www.virtahealth.com/patients
At some point, children move out of the sphere of the parent's control. It's relatively easy to control the food that is brought into the home, prepared for meals, offered as snacks, etc. Once a child ventures out into the world, often as a pre-teen/young teen, that control ends. Coupled with hormonal changes, it's no wonder that this is often the time that children develop eating disorders, whether over or under --- which are really just opposite sides of the same coin.
As a person who has struggled much of my life with food, I am firmly convinced that weight is more than a simple calories-in-calories-out equation. So many other factors, emotions, body type, heredity, among others, contribute to my physical condition.
And maybe the bottom line is that we stop judging each other on how we look. I grew up hearing 'pretty is as pretty does,' an admittedly old-fashioned way of saying to not judge a book by it's cover.
15
"I am firmly convinced that weight is more than a simple calories-in-calories-out equation"
Yes and no. Emotions matter, buy you cannot deny the simple physical facts of how food works in any living thing.
4
You also cannot deny that the "calories out" side of the equation is incredibly complex with a tremendous amount of variability from person to person.
10
K Henderson--they have found genes and genes and genes associated with overweight.
Why is it that all the same types that are nature when it comes to things like gender are all nurture when it comes to body weight? I know why. It allows them to judge, and it is so much fun to judge.
3
Kids are like birds. They need to eat often but we as adults should help with the food choices. If there is no junk food in the house everyone will eat the veggies and humus, guacamole, fruit, hard boiled eggs. Its not hard to have these things on hand for them to grab themselves. Its OK to eat often, just eat the right things. Grow a garden for them to pick at.
21
Parents would have to ban television and social media too because no child is going to pick at a garden after seeing all the pizza commercials on television and online.
3
No--children should not snack all day long. This leads to rejecting wholesome, home-cooked meals.
4
This article mentions the microbiome, and references the idea that children get much of the bacteria that are essential for digestion from their mothers. But the author fails to connect the dots. The makeup of the intestinal microbiome is an important factor in digestion. The gut microbes an infant inherits from a mother with a predisposition for obesity predispose that infant to obesity as well.
5
Kids are born with far more preferences than parents would like. Like other commenters, I have two kids with completely different metabolisms and food preferences (the lean muscular one is extremely picky, and the plump one is very adventurous). I don’t think it creates a good relationship with food to fight about it every day. I am not a weak parent and I don’t feed my kids junk, but sometimes they pick out all the carbs. In the end, food is only one of many areas that I supervise for my children. I have to strike a balance about which issue I’m going to address at any given time. Often the behavior surrounding the food is more important than the contents of the lunchbox: gratitude, sharing, patience, independence, understanding ‘enough’, taking turns, etc
And for those who are critical, I encourage you to spend some time in the company of a “hangry” child and decide if you’d rather grab something for her at a convenience store or make her wait till she gets home and endure a full blown tantrum over a sliced apple.
15
I think I'd still go for the apple. And the trick is to give them a small snack before heading to the grocery store to curb their hunger. And make them exercise that way they'll be too tired to complain loudly. If they want to throw tantrums try to reason with them, and if that doesn't work then maybe scold them.
3
Ah, yes. Many parents prioritize expedience over long-term benefit.
2
Your child "throws a full-blown tantrum" because you offered her a sliced apple?
Generally, kids throw tantrums because parents have conditioned them to get a reward when they do so. When a parent "grabs something at a convenience store," he or she is doing what far too many parents resort to: the fastest, easiest thing. Feeding children a healthy diet takes time, thought, and effort--the opposite of convenience.
1
Not A Perfect Human speaking here:
I breastfeed my son on demand for two years, let him play with food (avocadoes, bananas etc) when solids were introduced, didn't allow him to have sugary foods for the first four to five years of his life, never made him finish a meal, didn't make vegetables out to be the bad guys, and didn't use food as a reward or bribe. As an adult he's of normal weight, has a good appetite, likes to work out, loves to cook but isn't fixated on food -- and sweets aren't 'his thing.' Oh, and we never EVER (ever ever ever) went to McDonalds or eateries of their ilk.
A gentle but consistent focus on raising children to eat well can and DOES work. (Did I mention 'consistent'?)
15
Yes. Parents do. By their actions. First by what they buy. Second by how often they go out to eat. Third by what activities they focus their children. Fourth by the example they set themselves. Fifth by their own eating habits. The first and fifth being the most important of all.
If you have genetic predispositions, then you have to adjust the above factors.
My father is and has been overweight all his life. He never learned any of the above until after he retired. It is not easy to do in our current society. Bad food is readily available.
6
It's easy to grow up in a society where junk food is readily available and think of it as a normal thing, leading to thinking it's normal to consume these foods, as well as foods in general in excess. Combine that with a sedentary lifestyle and little motivation to go out and exercise and it's a recipe for disaster for many.
3
We didn't keep junk food in the house and all of my five kids ate fruits, vegetables and everything they should have. Two could eat anything and never gain weight, two were average and one was obese, for no reason that we could ever determine (all medical tests were normal). I've always been convinced that his metabolism was harmed when he had hepatitis at age 5, but i never found a doctor who would consider that as possible. In fact, they blamed me (of course!), basically saying that i had probably urged him to eat when he was sick, and that changed his behavior, which was completely untrue. At age 24, my son made the decision to have bariatric surgery, lost 135 lbs and couldn't be happier.
16
I know someone whose entire microbiome changed as a young adult due to an infection and the resulting treatment. It completely changed her weight permanently (she went the other way), independent of her food choices. It's definitely a thing...
I will first admit to being thin all my life. That said, the area where I live, South Carolina, is home to an extraordinary number of overweight or obese individuals.
I have also noted that obese children are most often accompanied by obese parents. In food stores, these obese families quite often fill their carts with prepared and calorie heavy foods. So, there is an enabling factor here.
I try not to condemn this scenario except for the fact that obesity is unhealthy. The bottom line is that our national health costs are higher because of this epidemic of overweight people.
If you are being fat shamed, consider that the perpetrator may be trying to save you from illness and high medical expenses. Also, I do not want to be responsible for paying for someone else's lifestyle choice in the form of higher medical and insurance costs.
11
@Bill
I think the shamers just like making people feel bad. And that right there is an unhealthy symptom, so let me advise you on a lifestyle change that will help you be happier and healthier--stop judging others, you'll feel better, less stress and anxiety over how other people are living, and you'll have more more time to focus on and resolve your own personal shortcomings and that will surely save us all some expense.
12
Shortcomings?
2
If fat shaming worked, then maybe I'd agree with you, but it does not.
4
Funny thing... as an abused child who's stepdad insisted on controlling everything that went into my mouth and beat me when other things happen -- from the old pictures I was a skinny kid. But over time, food became wedded to comfort and my eating was more driven by anxiety than need. And my weight grew. Getting polio didn't help either. Left a lifetime weight problem and a lifetime anxiety (even long after he died) that the door might abruptly open and I would be slammed to the floor. While I am sure the shamers would be pleased at what my folks did to me the lifetime marks they left on my psyche continue to haunt me.
11
Where does sleep and physical activity fit into the equation? One cannot ask: "do parents make kids fat?", yet focus solely on diet/food choices and completely ignore the importance of physical activity and adequate sleep, as recommended by the AAP for obesity prevention. https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/AAP-Updates...
NPR states that children are not as fit as they were a generation ago. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/20/246316731/kids-are-.... Are parents to blame? I'd love to see the author follow up this article with "Part 2" exploring the role of parents in ensuring children get adequate sleep and physical activity. Perhaps those factors are easier for parents to shape and/or control.
6
For a child in the story who is endlessly hungry, I suppose I would want to rule out certain things like malabsorption, and other conditions. Was the child gaining or losing weight? Wash he growing?
1
Never refuse mother's milk to a hungry baby.
Never refuse to feed a hungry child. Just make sure the only food in the house is good food: vegetables, fruit, legumes. The child who refuses to eat vegetables will eat them when he becomes hungry. Offer as much as he wants. He won't grow fat on these foods, no matter how much he eats.
Dry beans (cooked) are much cheaper than junk food. It's not about economics.
31
My son was overweight from the middle of elementary school until the end of high school, when he finally put himself on a very low carb diet. Not only did he easily shed the excess weight, but he realized very early on that "for the first time in my life, I'm not hungry all the time". Give the kids PROTEIN, with its naturally occuring fat. It's really what they need to grow, and satiating. Without the sugars and carbs, they won't fall into that rut of hungry/snacking/gaining weight.
9
But someone has to have the time to soak and cook those dry beans into something yummy, and that *is about economics. If your response is, "What's so hard about that?", then think of something that some people find easy but that you find difficult for reasons you cannot put your finger on. If you can't think of anything, then you are several standard deviations away from the mean, and-- respectfully stated-- you cannot use yourself as a standard to judge others' behavior.
5
It is not necessary to become obsessive about only serving healthy food to your children. Serving "unhealthy" food once in awhile is O.K.; but, I don't mean soda and junk food.
1
Oh, it is so easy to give advice. I have lost 110 pounds with medical help and intervention. My 15 year old daughter has gained 15 pounds in the last year, and I think part of it is part of her "rebellion". She refuses to be physically active, sneaks food, I could go on. I currently wear the jeans my 18 year old has "outgrown" during her freshman year of college.
My husband and I have lost a full size adult between us and our girls have gained weight despite our late conversion to better eating habits and exercise. I did the best I could. I'm tired of people judging me because I was fat or my girls because they are overweight.
40
I gained weight as a teen because it turned out I had polycystic ovary syndrome. It's very common and comes with hyperinsulinemia, which makes you store lots of what you eat as fat and still be ravenously hungry. When it was treated, off came the pounds. Overweight is complex.
3
Observing the portions that children are served it is clear that as a society we have lost sight of what is a suitable amount of food to serve children. Perhaps physicians can offer visual examples to parents at their child’s well child visits. Posters could be placed in medical/dental/urgent care waiting rooms illustrating what amount of each class of food should be served to a child at their various life stages. Social media could be enlisted as could television programs such as Sesame Street and other children’s shows. Talk show hosts and cooking show hosts could help as well. Many parents just do not know what is a “normal” amount of food to feed their child.
22
One good strategy is to let children as soon as they are able serve themselves.
3
GREAT ideas!!
With all the sugar, corn syrup, fat and artificial preservatives in the typical American diet, it's no wonder there is so much obesity! Genetic predisposition aside, obesity is ultimately an economic issue (it costs more to eat healthier). Make the cost of eating healthy food cheaper than a couple of Big Macs with coke and fries, and you're likely to see dramatic differences in our society's overall health. All that said, it is the responsibility of the parent to see that their child eats well, and to provide a positive role model as far as keeping fit, so therefore they carry some of the blame for their child's obesity.
1
Eating healthy food is cheaper than a couple of Big Macs and coke: rice, carrots, legumes, onions, tinned tomatoes, basic greens - these things cost very little and can be used to make a meal that will keep your energy high and stable for a lot longer than a cheap sugar rush without any nutritional value. If you’re time poor, make a big pot of it and eat it over a few days, it will take you less time than multiple trips to a fast food outlet. Eating healthily takes knowledge, but not a lot of money.
3
No just economics but also convenience are important. It seems one has to make real sacrifices in how to spend one's time and cooking healthy meals takes time (planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc).
6
True! I do it, but it is a significant time commitment. I don't know how single parents do it.
3
I was overweight as a child back in the late 60’s / early 70’s in spite of my Mother’s best efforts to keep me away from fast food and soda. I ate plenty of fruits and vegetables and everything else. I’m sure I would always have been overweight but I really blame a 1000 calorie a day diet that my pediatrician put me on at 9 and a try at weight watchers when I was 11 at really blowing me up. I went from chubby to obese in those years. You cannot starve a child. The human body will compensate. I still struggle to this day but I know enough now to develop the best eating habits I can and to forgive myself for the rest.
72
Forgive yourself? For what? For struggling with weight? It makes me sad to think you feel you've done something wrong. Overeating, gaining weight and even being obese are not wrongs that need to be forgiven; they're just struggles most of us face and hope to overcome.
Would you feel you needed to forgive yourself for losing a game of checkers? Of course not! Take the same attitude to food (or booze or shopping or drugs); sometimes it wins. No shame needed.
And I agree that children should have 24/7 access to food. It's the kind of food parents buy that is the main problem. Very few people overeat apples or broccoli.
17
I'm glad you shared your experience. Starving a child is abuse and it doesn't work. My mother often didn't allow us to eat when we were hungry, and we pigged out on junk food at friends' houses every chance we got. 3 out of 6 of us became overweight.
4
I was a kind who loved to eat voraciously and grew up to be an adult that eats voraciously and I am quite slim. The reason? It's hard to be overweight when you consume mostly salads, vegetables, and fruit. Parenting is hard, and it's especially hard with the overabundance of processed foods pushed on consumers today. But I'm very grateful that my mom raised me without any junk foods in the house, understanding that I could either eat what everyone else did for dinner- aka, a healthy, balanced plate that the adults also ate- or go to bed hungry. When I hear parents say "He just won't eat unless I give him ____" I just can't understand it- such a strategy would have been unthinkable to me as a kid, and that was because it would have had a 100% failure rate. Your taste buds adjust to what you eat- if you rid your home of processed foods, of gluten, of easy to grab sugary snacks, and ONLY provide them with vegetables (which you can dress up to be really delicious), fruits, and certain meats (and of course, butter, olive oil, etc)- your kids will adjust. You are shaping their taste buds, and I'm very grateful my parents shaped mine to appreciate vegetables and "adult" foods rather than what I see most kids eating nowadays.
46
I totally agree. This was my house when I was a young child; I didn't discover the larger world of cookies and brownies until I started elementary school and was exposed to my first classroom birthday party. Although I certainly like those foods, I still enjoy fruits, vegetables, and healthy meals today. When I was growing up, my Italian American grandmother lived nearby and cooked great meals using olive oil and other goodies, meals which she shared with us on a regular basis, so I grew up eating that stuff as well.
My mother was also adamant that I'd eat what was served. Our family kitchen was not a restaurant and she was not a short-order cook. It was all within reason, of course, but I never got to demand an entirely separate meal because I didn't feel like eating what she'd cooked for the family.
I've contrasted that with my friend's stubborn and demanding kid, a huge junk food connoisseur who won't eat vegetables, fruit, or a decent meal. The child has never met a cookie, donut, piece of cake, or chip that she doesn't like, and now she's taken to making dinner requests and pitching a fit when they're denied. Occasionally they can get Kraft mac and cheese or chicken nuggets into her, but otherwise it seems to be junk all the way. None of this would have flown with my mom, but this is a new era in parenting apparently. The child's eating habits are atrocious, and the sad part is that she will pay the price when she's older.
10
It really depends on the child's temperament and whether the "adjustment" period is manageable for the family, including, for example, whether there is enough time and energy to dress veggies up to be delicious. I'm not suggesting parents have no responsibility, but I think it's worth remembering that just because something worked for you does not mean it will automatically work for someone else with an entirely different genome and in entirely different circumstances.
8
But as the article points out, parents can’t control the food kids have access to outside of the home. Certainly keeping junk food out of the house is important and can only help, but it’s a limited strategy.
1
Not to mention that there are many kids who can eat garbage and never gain weight -- until they're in their thirties. You can't tell which kid is eating a healthy diet just by looking at them. (I was skinny as a stick as a child despite drinking lots of Coke, and eating lots of candy and french fries. It didn't catch up to me until my forties, and for some males it takes even longer to catch up to them). Metabolism has a lot to do with genetics, microbiome, sleep, and stress, not just diet. Two kids in the same house can eat the same thing and one gets fat while another doesn't.
64
Absolutely my experience with my two boys, one of whom is overweight and one of whom is too thin. Not that that prevents outsiders from blaming ME for the overweight child.....
6
"It’s important not to overfeed babies." Please no. Dr. Klass, the notion one can overfeed a baby is dangerous. Parenting a newborn is hard enough, please do not suggest that parents can overfeed babies. To new mothers / fathers, please do what you have to do to keep your baby fed, be that formula or breast milk. Baby will stop eating when he or she is satisfied, to suggest parents can somehow overfeed a baby is ridiculous and dangerous.
107
I think what she is getting at, but not making clear, is feeding babies more than they want. It is sadly not uncommon to see with some parents with bottle feedings, an idea that the baby "should" take a certain amount per feeding, and an attempt to make the baby take the entire bottle, whether or not the baby is showing cues if s/he is full or not. Typically the parents will present with a baby who is very spitty but happy (ie not reflux). Over time, the concern, of course, is that the baby will learn to disregard their own internal cues of hunger in favor of taking everything placed in front of them. I imagine that space contraints sadly did not allow for elaboration in this, because I think it is an important topic.
5
Dr. Lumeng sums up the dilemma nicely in the ending quote. Parents are forced out into the public sphere when schools, sports leagues, and camps continue to offer poor food choices and encourage faulty nutrition. Instead we have to deal with parents and coaches who resist and want to continue the junk food party for every activity. We would all do better to scale back on the party train and teach kids (and ourselves) you don't need a snack every time you get up off the couch.
44
Is there a proven link between frequency of infant feeding and obesity later in childhood? I have always heard and believed that a breastfed baby should eat as much as he likes. Mine certainly did and were all fat infants who grew into thin children. I think it's dangerous to suggest that parents should limit infant feeding to prevent later obesity.
91
Absolutely agree. My son doubled in weight in three months, weighed twenty pounds at six months and is now almost 12, and is 85th percentile height and 40th for weight —proportions he has had since age 2. He was exclusively breastfed. I don’t know about formula babies but I have heard breastfed babies regulate and stop when full and they clearly don’t all start out and stay fat.
5
Also agree. My kids were so incredibly fat as babies and toddlers that people would stop me on the street. At age two my son had tan lines in the fat creases on his arms. It was close to freakish, especially with my son. Both were round, fat butterballs. But both kids had essentially nothing but breastmilk for the first 6 months (neither were interested in other foods until much later) and continued breastfeeding past 2 years. The pediatrician would hear this and tell me not to worry. Both kids slimmed down by preschool, and at 14 and 18 are both extremely slim now... and great eaters. If my husband or I were heavy, I'm sure we would have been shamed and pressured to limit their food -- the absolute worst approach, especially with children!
18
My children were both exclusively breastfed/on pumped breastmilk until 6 months of age and both skyrocketed in weight dramatically until solids were introduced. My son is 6 years old and until recently was 80%ile for height and 25 for weight- which worried his pediatrician since he wouldn't slow down enough from playing to sit and eat until his last checkup when he finally slipped into the normal weight curve at 90%ile height and 40%ile weight. My daughter, less dramatically so but is similarly at 4 years old tall and relatively thin. Growth curves for babies were typically derived from formula fed babies and may not be accurate for breastfed babies, who may have differential rates of growth.
3
Sometimes, a parent leads the way for his child. Sometimes, a parent shows the way for his child.
1
I think the onus is on the doctors now. I had a baby who nursed almost continuously for the first year of his life. Most mothers would have thought something was horribly wrong, and momentarily, I thought perhaps there was something lacking, as did his father. We would panic and pump or buy formula, which he hated. I was lucky to have had two older sisters to let me know that he was just a big baby and hungry, so I didn't panic, I just nursed him. In a month or so, he was in a good eating rhythm. He ate for two hours on, one hour off, 24/7. At seven months, he was covered in rolls of fat. It was exhausting, but admittedly, I was half asleep most of the time. My former husband was very supportive, and I nursed my son until he was three. He is now a senior in high school and has, unlike most people in my family, an innate sense of when he is full. He doesn't snack or overeat. and that's not due to any nagging on my part or any good habits he's observed. We were dreadful role models. He is muscular and lanky, though his genes and environment predispose him in the very, very opposite direction.
16
As a mother, I felt judged when my daughter was overweight and judged all over again when I encouraged healthy eating. I didn't want my daughter to be burdened with the social and physical consequences of obesity but I certainly did not want the emotional baggage that comes with having a mother constantly telling her she looks fat :( I sought help from a nutritionist who was just marvelous. The whole family began eating along the guidelines suggested by the nutritionist -- and we all became much healthier! Happy ending so far, it's been 14 years and my daughter has been able to maintain a healthy, stable weight even once on her own in college.
33
The services of a Registered Dietitian (RD) are even better. In most states there is no real definition of "nutritionish" but an RD has had a rigorous education in nutrition.
8
There's something that really hit me about the comment that "you [parents] are ruining [your children's] future health and self esteem” by making them fat.
I don't think it's loving parents that hurt kids' self-esteem as much as it is internet commenters telling those kids that overweight bodies are inherently shameful.
34
Chronic diseases including diabetes, osteoarthritis, cancers - endometrial, breast, colon, kidney, gallbladder, and liver; and cardiovascular diseases - hypertension, Coronary heart disease, stroke
...don't care about your self-esteem.
4
But parents do. It's kinda hard to have a decent life without a decent amount of self-esteem.
I believe that genetics play a bigger role in eating behavior and preferences than has been recognized. I have two kids (11 and 3) from two different fathers. My 11-year-old has only ever been living with me and her stepdad. She is incredibly picky and has always been since we started feeding solids. She only eats one type of fruit and one type of vegetable despite offering fruits and veggies again and again and again for a decade. Her biological Dad is very, very picky as well, however, unlike our daughter, he is overweight because in his pickiness, he focuses on junk food. My daughter also loves junk food but her stepdad and I simply refuse to buy junk food. Her choices are limited and she is rail thin. My 3-year-old is an adventurous and feracious eater who eats everything you put in front of him without missing a beat. With him I am sure that if we made junk food available, he would gain unhealthy amounts of weight, despite the fact that he loves fruits, veggies, and all the good stuff. I know this is anecdotal but it really seems a combination of genetics and availability of certain foods that determine body weight.
29
My two nieces are grown now. They have the same mother and father (my brother) who both are pretty adventurous eaters. There was always a lot of "whole food" in the house and rarely soda. The eldest has been a trier and liker of a vast assortment of food since she was a tot. Her 4-year-younger sister had a very short list of things she would eat, until as a preteen she started eating with friends and their families. MacDonald's french fries and chicken tenders were her favorite food group when she could get them, along with ice cream. There were no weight issues; both apparently inherited the genes that kept their father and I thin (skinny as kids) into our early thirties.
My point is that even two young people with the same parents and food environment can have vastly different food proclivities.
Fun fact: When the younger one was about four she was proclaiming her dislike of a restaurant dish that she had refused to try. Her grandmother asked in an innocent tone of voice, "What if you hsd never tried ice cream?" Total silence.
3
The fact that the surge in obesity has out-raced any possible genetic change suggests that your hypothesis is ill founded
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html.
3
Definitely easy to blame the other parent!
1
Sometimes, it is the parents' fault. I remember my mother forcing me to eat way more than I wanted, until I was in physical pain, and then standing over me and dumping still more food on my plate. Of course, my mother had an eating disorder; she used to weigh herself 4 to 5 times a day, and both she and my father used to body shame me for being fat. I'm an adult, in my 60s; I've battled weight all my life, but, I eventually learned to eat only what I needed to satisfy hunger, and, I am not now overweight.
28
Thank you for sharing your story. :)
As a parent of 2 kids who also happens to work on the frontlines of the antiobesity fight teaching children and adults about healthy eating, I can corroborate this article. One of my kids has a healthy appetite, is prone to overeating if she isn't paying attention, can eat a variety of healthy foods and craves greens or salad when her diet goes awry. My other will eat hotdogs and pizza or nothing if I let him. Sometimes my best practices for clients, fall by the wayside at home. However, my biggest struggle is with what Dr Klass names-- the obesogenic environment. This is what we should be paying attention to. I am a model parent when it comes to nutrition as well as enforcement of rules and boundaries. But I am constantly defeated by the targeting of empty calories to my children. I am constantly battling the cultural norms that in place at schools, other parents, activities, events, media (even though we have little media in our home) so that my kids can have a basically healthy diet most of the time. I get yelled at by my little one for not being like the other parents who pack their kids snack food for lunch. It is alot of work. It is exhausting. Even I and my husband are not immune to the extra treats left out in the office kitchen. Rather than shaming parents, lets start working on shifting the norms in our communities and keeping the snack food/junk food out of everyday life.
96
My kids' high school PTO wanted parents to send in snacks for exams. They had a week and a half of exams. At the end of each day, there was still a mountain of cookies and other treats out on the tables.
My daughter's university does the same thing. They send parents brochures for care packages of "smart snacks" (who knew Doritos and Mars bars are "smart" snacks?) to send for exam week.
The message sent was that a bit of stress should be alleviated/rewarded with a lot of sugar.
3
For so many of us this is really true. We do not eat packaged food and my nearly 3 year old likes to eat and eats really well - which has been a huge commitment for me to make sure I always have something cooked and ready for all of us. That said, the more she is in the "real world," the more I have to say no. Junk food/candy is offered by everyone all the time (after the 10am Tuesday ballet class, at the DENTIST, the preschool offering juice as part of the snack when we know water will suffice if the kids aren't offered juice). Where I do think parents play a role is the constant offering of food to young children. Day after day I see parents and nannies offering packaged food to kids after activities or on the playground around the clock so kids are eating more than moving. This only promotes the habit of constantly eating empty calories versus sitting and enjoying a wholesome, nutritious meal. As Ms B says, until we change the environment & the norms, it's an uphill battle for so many people.
36
So true!!! Plus the number of people who think that kids will only eat food that is packaged as ‘kids food’ (yogurt squeeze tubes with loads of sugar and bright packaging) versus just regular food (yogurt with some cut up fruit) blows my mind! I once had a friend screech at her 2 year old ‘you won’t like that!!!’ when he was sticking a chip in a very mild salsa of tomatoes, avocados, black beans and corn. My 2 year old was shoveling it in :).
13
"Trust your instincts" is a tall order when arguing that, in an "obesiogenic" environment making non-packaged food a scarcity, marketing and convenience rule people's decisions. Patients need good guidance which the medical community frankly doesn't have. Parents of obese children struggle every day. Dropping the judgement is a great start.
6
The advice was for the mother of a six week old infant, in that case I support the mother's instinct too, particularly if she's breastfeeding.
If a baby is hungry, feed it. Both breastmilk and formula are not junkfood to be wary about.
13
How hard is it to pack an apple or a pear, if your child absolutely MUST snack between meals? How hard is it to throw an inexpensive turkey breast in the oven and use the meat for salads, sandwiches and other dishes throughout the week? Or scramble some eggs? Or cook up some oatmeal in a micro, slow cooker or on the stove? Home-popped popcorn is an inexpensive and relatively healthful snack, if snacking must take place.
There is absolutely no reason that the average family should be eating processed food more than very, very occasionally. Let alone drive-up fast food or takeout. Get off Facebook and spend Sunday evenings batch cooking and make it non-negotiable.
(and please, no "food desert!" refrain. 93% of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Walmart. I'd not choose to shop there but if needs must, fresh food is available at those stores.)
24
Food deserts can exist where there is a WalMart 15 minutes away if you can't get there. In our case, for instance, the nearest grocery store is 30 minutes away, and that's only if you have a car that runs and the gas to get there. There is no public transportation.
And they exist in cities too where transportation is unavailable.
9
1,2,3...wait for the anecdotes from perfect humans
93
I thought there would be some, too--not too many this time out. A good sign?
3
I could use some condescension in my diet!
4
You don't have to be perfect to feed your kid a healthy diet. Just use basic common sense--and realize and accept the fact that it takes some thought and effort.
3
I have seen this. Kids in my own family, even. Siblings are not overweight - but this one child just is obsessed with food. Thinks and talks about food all the time - always concerned about her next meal. Eats really fast. Gets absolutely angry all the time if she's even slightly hungry, very distracted. Its difficult with kids like this because no matter what you do, it never seems to do anything. And she exercises and does sports, and the food she eats is perfectly normal/healthy. Its just excessive quantities, all the time. Its a very difficult situation. Until you see it or live it, its very easy to judge.
69
Ask for a referral to an endocrinologist. Look into thyroid and insulin levels in particular.
16
It's pretty rare, but has any doctor mentioned Prader-Willi syndrome? It's a genetic disease that causes constant and insatiable hunger. There are other symptoms, so it's unlikely that it would go this long unnoticed, but not impossible.
2
I'd have that child checked for low blood sugar or other issues -- rings a bell with me and that was my problem.
2
Back in the day when I would occasionally visit McDonald's, two visits stand out: In one, parents scolded a toddler to "finish your drink!" -- a soft drink. In the other, I watched in shock as parents poured the remains of a soda into their baby's bottle.
My daughter used to joke that she was thin because she had to eat my cooking -- and she was right, as she is ruefully discovering while living on her own (I was a vegetarian, now eat whole foods, plant based). She did say that she now misses my cooking, since she has to do it for herself.
That said, I had 4 pets: 2 dogs and 2 cats. One of each were nibblers: they would never overeat. The other 2 were foodaholics: they vacuumed up their food, then rushed over to the other pet's dish to eat that food, too! It made feeding a challenge. But I controlled what and how much they ate, and after the foodaholics initially gained weight, they lost it (I figured out what was going on, and fed them accordingly) and then all my pets maintained healthy weights the rest of their lives.
9
Yes! I have noticed that in my pets, too. Some never overeat. some will eat themselves sick if you let them. Since pets are not susceptible to tv advertising and can't eat junk food unless we give it to them, it does make you wonder whether there's a biological switch that's tripped in some but not others.
6
You make a good point. We have two dogs and four cats, all adopted or discovered between 2 and 4 months of age. Only one was scrawny as a youngster, and she is now slim and trim at 7#. The dogs would overeat if we let them, as would two of the cats. The one who is currently a bit chunky is the one we've had since she was a week old--the runt of a foster litter, she was doted on by her mom and human family. When they started eating kitten food all the others would keep her from the food, so I always put her and her dish up on a chair. She has never been deprived. And she would happily be as big as a house if we let her. One of her sisters, the one we found on our neighbor's porch on Thanksgiving, was 3 months old and will not eat people food. She never tries to steal anyone else's, and even though she is our biggest cat she is trim.
To see such variety in animals more governed by instinct, it makes sense that we should see some variety in humans as well. We just need to learn multiple strategies with our kids to help them learn to eat well too.
3
There is a genetic link - Labrador retrievers have both a genetic drive for a voracious appetite and obesity. I'm sure something similar occurs in humans. But the bigger questions is, as always, why the huge uptick in obesity in the past few decades? Why do people require fewer calories per day than they did 30-40 years ago- even when their activity levels are comparable. I have come around to the idea of a change in our environment that has changed our gut flora. As someone who eats like a normal person (1500-2000 calories per day)and is about 100 lbs overweight I can attest that when I maintained a huge weight loss for years I simply didn't eat more than 3000-4000 calories per week and spent 2 hours a day in the gym. What is up with that?
3
I would never limit a child's access to food, but I'd make sure that all available food was pretty healthy.
My niece is wants to eat constantly (but only sweets/pastries/cookies). She is relentless; it's very hard to deal with.
Both of her parents are obese, but her twin is very thin and only eats at mealtimes, which is interesting to me.
When at my house, I let my nieces eat whatever they want in between meals and as much as they want. The insatiable twin surveys my fruit, nuts, toast, water, and milk options and chooses nothing but continues to complain that she's hungry.
15
It sounds like she's dealing with a sugar addiction. She's not hungry -- her brain is craving sugar.
4
There is nothing particularly healthy about fruit or toast, especially if your "insatiable" niece is prone to a cycle of insulin spikes, blood sugar crashes and resulting intense hanger.
1
Sean, not only is the toast option not low-carb or low-cal, I even offer to sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon sugar on it.
I don't think blood sugar has anything to do with it; she will beg for food (a new treat) 5 minutes after finishing ice cream or a cookie.
I personally think it's anxiety.
3
My dad was a fat kid from a fat family. As a young man, he dropped the weight through rigorous dieting and exercising, but his weight has fluctuated his entire life. When it starts to creep up, he brings it down before it becomes an issue. My mother has always been thin. My brother and I developed good habits from both of them - a love of exercise from my dad (he's 75 and still exercises 6 days a week), and the willingness and ability to prepare healthful, home cooked meals from my mom. Both of my parents worked full time jobs. Parents absolutely have an impact on their kids' habits.
27
It's not that parents intentionally make kids fat, or do it out of a lack of love or care. We just don't know what we're doing. It's the parents, not the kids, who control what goes on in the house, and what goes on in their kids lives regarding food, especially when they are in their early years of development. Kids are going to be a result of their parents teaching, training and modeling.
My practice of behavioral therapy for permanent weight loss, and my book, "The Anderson Method", teaches people that their "normal" Americanized attitudes and habits are outrageously disordered, making it all but impossible not to be obese. And it teaches them how to "reprogram" themselves so that permanent weight loss is achieved relatively easily and very enjoyable.
People have no idea how disordered their beliefs and habits are, and how they have been brainwashed to accept obesegenic thinking and behavior as normal. As long as people are unaware of how disordered their food related habits and attitudes are and how to change them, they will continue making themselves obese, and their children too, as they pass these disease-producing beliefs and habits to their children. Without knowing it, they are teaching their children to be obese.
I am often asked to help obese children lose weight, but if the parents don't take responsibility for changing themselves, the kids are out of luck.
8
I have a friend who grew up poor and sometimes went hungry. When she got to college and the all-you-can-eat meal plan, she quickly gained 50 pounds she's still trying to lose. Her friends heckle her about eating "rabbit food" when she brings healthy food to work. It's harder for some folks to manage than others.
2
Once your kid goes to school you've lost control. Watch a elementary school party. Many parents send in enough treats for the whole class. Most kids will eat one or two. Some kids will want to try all of them. Then if there are treats left, the parent helpers will offer them around again. The few kids who had to sample them all will take seconds of the tastiest treats. No one and certainly not the kids themselves will notice these few kids who are eating 5 times as much as every other kid, unless it is your kid.
Also, if you have a high energy kid with a fast metabolism and a low energy kid with a sluggish metabolism, are you constantly going to say high energy can have seconds and low energy can't? Even if you are foolish enough to try, the high energy kid may decide to be fair to his sibling and give her some of his seconds. Maybe the low energy kid should snack on carrots or celery, but high energy needs more calories.
In both cases, the plump kid feels unfairly treated and shamed for their weight. All they've learned is that being fat is bad, not how to negotiate the food environment and their love of tasty food.
25
In my community, parents are not allowed to bring food to the school for parties. The CDC has for years been giving attention to the childhood obesity epidemic and schools have had to change their food policies to comply with demands of health-conscious parents and community leaders. If your schools are not on board with combatting the obesity epidemic, they need to be better managed.
8
Work with the school to stop the practice of using food as treats or rewards. An extra game, stickers, something can be the replacement.
And yes, you have to limit the fat kid's food. No one said parenting would be easy.
12
Parties are occasional, and an occasional treat or binge is not the issue.
1
Unless your five year old has a job and car, exactly how is this child getting access to fast food, junk food, etc?
100
If they are five, they are in kindergarten where snacking is part of the routine.
12
Schools have had food policies for years now that are geared to reversing the childhood obesity epidemic. Junk food is not going to be part of their food service plan.
5
I taught kindergarten for 35 years and snacking was never part of the routine. Occasionally someone would have a birthday celebration at school, and that's it. It's not the occasional exception, it's the routine that sets the standard and eating habits. Freaking out about something that happens once a month or so is ridiculous. And home is much more of an influence than school is--I saw that with my own kids and with the children of others whose eating habits I tried to influence; there's not really much you can do.
And while preschools (and Headstart) do serve snacks, they are usually small and studiedly healthy. At my school it might be a few goldfish crackers, a couple of small carrots, and four ounces of milk.
2