Fat children and bad parenting

In a way, it makes perfect sense that children in a country that values growth over all else would be fat. Our children mirror our values as a country, and ours is predicated on growth and expansionism. Adipose tissue and inflation have much in common.

It's not fair to blame fat children entirely on fast food, poor nutrition etc.

In my culture, like Mr. Dreher's, food was love. But my parents were "working poor," and we only had potato chips, etc. at picnics at the beach. We never had soda/pop at home--it was milk, tea (hot in winter, iced in summer). We were lucky if we went to a fast food place once a year. My mother baked her own bread. I was raised "crunchy con" by necessity, before Mr. Dreher was born.

Yet I weighed 180 lbs. (that's one hundred and eighty) in high school, and I'm only 5'3".

Karen: Of course, our problem here is.. poor people food is very UNhealthy food. Ramen noodles are fried, and loaded with fat and salt. As are boxed macaroni, hamburger, hot dogs.. Fresh produce is, matching quantity with quantity and the ability to keep your children from crying for the next meal, expensive.

The thing is, my kids won't eat fresh produce. Apples, they'll eat -- but that's about it. We struggle with them all the time (Matthew has sensory issues, which is a different story). They eat lots of rice and pasta, and eat hamburger meat and chicken (grilled, not fried). Matthew is cheap to cook for: he won't eat meat, and the only protein he'll eat is cheese and peanut butter. With the exception of milk, it doesn't cost a lot to feed our kids. I'd be willing to spend more if they'd eat more vegetables, but for now they don't, and we're working on that.

What they don't do is drink soda, and eat junk food. We're not Puritans around our house. Julie made a chocolate cake the other day, and last night we gave the kids a slice of it. But that's a treat, and the kids know that. We have chips and salsa about once a week, I'd say -- again, a treat, not part of our regular diet. Every now and then I'll bring the kids home a piece of candy from the candy jar at work -- a treat.

I should say that I try to put myself under the same discipline on eating as the kids, to model good food habits for them. It's tough. But being a grown-up is tough.

Besides the availability of high caloric foods, to much electronic entertainment is an issue. It is very passive and kids don't get exercise while doing it. We don't have cable and while we let the kids use the computer it is time limited.

That way the kids eventually get bored. At that point they either get really quiet and up to no good, or go outside and play. Either way they're getting exercise which is really important.

And yeah, that's flour. Not 'flower'. Darn phonetic typing.

I think he's right on by stating, "The responsibility falls chiefly on the heads of those in charge of their care and feeding: parents." My wife and I buy the groceries (including snacks) for our home. It's our responsibility to teach moderation to our kids. Sadly, too often we want to blame others (society) for things we should be responsible for. There are consequences for our decisions each and every day. It's time to take responsibility for those choices we make. It's one thing when a poor choice affects my health. On the other hand, the stakes are raised when the choices I make affect my child's health. That's what being a parent is all about!

Childhood obesity has gone up ever since moms went to work en masse. Mom is not around to say, "No, you cannot have a snack. It will spoil your supper." It's easy for a babysitter to appease a whining child with a snack. Bad habits all around. Something to think about while I eat a bag of chips and watch tv.

Yes of course, this is the fault of working MOTHERS because fathers certainly have no say in the raising of their children!! I am a working mother. My girls take their lunch to school everyday. I often have lunch with them and their friends and am mortified by the number of stay-at-home moms who send their children to school with Lunchables!! Or as bad, the kids eat from the cafeteria. One stay-at-home mom told me that she spends over $500 a month eating out!!

Furthermore, kids will eat what is in the house...if you don't want them eating junk while you are away, then don't have it in the house! Or set rules that you expect them to obey! Either way, you win and your kids win!

Sure, let's blame working moms. How productive! For the record, I work and all three of my children are normal to slender. But they eat reasonably healthy and are all involved in sports, dance or just general running round after school. We don't watch much tv.

My sister-in-law doesn't work. My nephew is already obese (as are his parents). At 7, he is about a foot taller than my 7-year-old and weighs as much as I do. But the family isn't active at all. And their diet consists primarily of meat (usually fried) served with white potatoes, white flour and sugar with a side or two of lard.

It's a shame that the law doesn't recognize such parenting as child neglect, because that is truly what it is. Just a darn shame. I have cried many tears over this child, but my parents and I have no power to intervene. It seems that living the trailer-park, Jerry Springer-esque lifestyle isn't against the law.

From the Washington Post today, and FDA study found that companies that market soda and fast food (among other things, some healthier are spending $1.6 Billion to market their products to children. If I read the article correctly, that doesn't include product placement and tie-ins with movies, etc. The article said almost 1/3 of American children are obese.

I believe in personal responsiblity, but I also believe in societal responsibility and corporate responsiblity. Childhood and adult obesity represent a national crisis, and I believe a bipartisan solution to this crisis would be best.

A big factor which seems to get ignored is all the snacking that goes on now.

When I was a kid in the early '70s, most parents discouraged between-meal snacks because everyone knew they would (a) give you cavities, (b) make you fat, and worst of all (c) spoil your appetite for dinner.

I do not remember my mother ever bringing snacks when we went out. If we were going to, say, spend the day at the beach, she packed a cooler with sandwiches, and things like the ever-popular chips, but it was Lunch, not a continuous buffet.

In those days, if you wanted food, you had to either get it from your kitchen (where your mother stood guard to keep you from spoiling your dinner), or you had to hoof it to some sort of food-selling edifice like a restaurant or supermarket. Bookstores sold books, not muffins; gas stations sold gas, not candy; the hardware store sold hardware, not Doritos. Libraries did not have snack bars; schools did not have vending machines; and people did not feel it necessary to eat every 2 hours.

Nowadays, no matter WHERE we go, we are assaulted by racks of snacktacular junk food positioned right at whiny-kid height. It drives me insane to have to say "We are going to the hardware store to buy ten-penny nails; we are NOT buying candy today," to forestall the inevitable chorus of "I'm HUNGRY!" from my bored offpsring.

My kids get snacktime in school; it occurs one hour before lunch. The predictable result is that they seldom eat their lunches. My oldest daughter's Brownie meetings seem to be more of a buffet than a scout meeting; the leader and her two children are all quite portly. The leader asked us to send individual snacks for our kids, in addition to the snack provided, "in case they don't like what we're serving." My response was "if they are being picky, that means they are not very hungry."

Some people are definitely more prone to putting on weight than others. My oldest and youngest children are skinny little things; my middle one is the most physically active but always had more padding on her frame. She also is the one who is most interested in food, any food, and especially foods of the sweet variety. If I kept junk food in the house and let her eat it whenever she wanted, she would probably resemble a small whale. I'm not an ogre; they are allowed dessert in small quantities (provided they finished their veggies, of course) but she definitely focuses more on the acquisition and ingestion of food far more than her sisters, who often have to be reminded that it is time to eat.

I was acquainted with a family who had a daughter the same age as mine, and as babies they were both adorably pudgy. I lost touch with them, but ran into them a few days ago and the two six-year-olds were playing together. My chubby baby had grown into a muscular, sturdy kindergartner, and theirs had grown into a very chubby little girl. I remember that they always had junk food around "for her husband," and that the kids were allowed to eat whatever and whenever they wanted. Her two sons were skinny and wiry, but her daughter is going to have a hard time unlearning all these bad eating habits as she has the body type which demands moderation in consumption.

"But I do believe that a lot of the obesity epidemic in children boils down to bad parenting. I'm raising three kids, one of whom has a serious sweet tooth. If we kept snack foods around the house freely accessible to the kids, or let them eat as much as they wanted, or fed them a laissez-faire diet of processed and junk food, well, they'd be fat kids too."

Don't be too sure of that. I've seen some scandalously bad eating habits among some very thin kids. Genetics is at least half the story. On the other hand, I've never seen a very large kid who had healthy eating habits, so there is definitely some choice involved.

Kudos to The Man From K Street. Bipartisan solutions gave us the agribusiness/industrial food axis that is a major contributor to this so-called national crisis. Bipartisan solutions gave us the Farm Bills that engorge corporate farmers while squeezing out the little guys. The way to defuse this national crisis is to eat less and move more, and I say that knowing full well that it isn't easy, having accumulated about 80 pounds of me that must now be painfully eliminated by (sigh) eating less and moving more. My problem.
But for heaven's sake, leave the bipartisan solutions out of this. Let those clowns in DC touch anything, and watch it get worse, fast.

I'm incredulous at the number of my children's friends' parents who simply don't cook. Some work and some don't, but I hear from my kids that there often is no "official" dinner at their friends' houses, not just because the family isn't all there at the same time, but because no one made anything specifically for dinner, everyone is just supposed to just scrounge for whatever. When I was growing up, there was always dinner, and there's always dinner in my house. I plan the week's menus when I'm making out the grocery list. If it's going to be an especially busy day, I plan something to throw in the crock pot. I think a lot of parents have thrown up their hands on making dinner, both the food and the event itself, and that's bad for both reasons.

Childhood obesity has gone up ever since moms went to work en masse.

I wondered how long it would be before working moms got blamed for this too!

It's BS of course. As someone else pointed out, it completely absolves the father from any responsibility having to do with his kids' eating habits, and also assumes that said working mom is only working for all those reasons that traddies love to decry (status, a high-living lifestyle, big cars, more money, and - horrors - personal fulfillment!), as opposed to working because she has to for the family to get by.

And no, I'm not a working mother. I have four kids, I stay home, and do cook homemade on a tight budget. I won't mention, either, how often I see the kids of my fellow stay-at-home moms packing Lunchables and other crap to school because, they say, it is "easier" and "faster". I can see how they consider it easier and faster, but if you're not working, and you've only got one kid or maybe two, what are you doing with your time that you can't take a few extra minutes to even make just a peanut butter and banana sandwich, say, which is loads better than any of the prepackaged crap you're sending your kid with?!

As for the larger issue, until it is as cheap and easy to eat healthy foods as it is to eat crap foods in this country, obesity will continue to climb. And someone else nailed it above when they mentioned eating habits being completely in line with the rest of the American attitude about everything else: "bigger/more is better". I don't know how often I've been shocked by the portion sizes that Americans consider to be "normal". Coming from a non-American family, maybe I see it easier. I do notice I have to watch my kids' portion sizes carefully, as they are used to seeing their friends with huge amounts of everything on their plates/in their lunchboxes, and so are always trying to get a bit more!

Anne: As for the larger issue, until it is as cheap and easy to eat healthy foods as it is to eat crap foods in this country, obesity will continue to climb.

I believe this is largely a myth. We buy frozen vegetables a fair amount, which are relatively cheap and easy to prepare. Meat has gotten a lot more expensive, as we all know, but most people have completely unrealistic ideas about how much meat they "need" per meal. My breakfast most mornings is oatmeal made from delicious steel-cut oats from the bin at Whole Foods, which is really cheap. Water is cheaper than soda. Sugary kid's cereals are not cheap at all. Homemade popcorn is cheaper than microwave popcorn or chips. And so forth.

You do have a point about the ease with which crap food can be prepared and consumed. But come on, one is supposed to say, "Well, my kids are obese because it's easier to do the drive-thru at Whataburger than to steam green beans, can't be helped"? Get a copy of Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything" -- he'll teach you how *easy* it is to prepare simple meals that can be put together relatively inexpensively.

And you have to plan ahead. In the summer, we tend to do a lot of grilling on the weekend, not only to eat then, but to put meat away in the freezer for eating over the coming week. If we're all running late one night, it's easy to defrost a grilled chicken breast, or whatever, versus driving through a Krustyburger line. Cheaper too. But you have to plan ahead. Convenience costs -- economically, and in terms of health.

Oh good, another sarcastic, pointless comment from Daniel that adds nothing to the discussion. Sigh...

The belief that children are fat, particularly low-income children, because the only cheap food is unhealthy is a cop out. There is plenty of inexpensive, healthy food out there. It takes a little more work on the part of parents to prepare it and a little more creativity to get your kids to enjoy it, but it's out there.

Childhood obesity is a multi-factorial problem. I wouldn't jump on "bad" parenting so much as ignorant and/or stressed parenting AND bad food policy at the highest levels.

Poor kids can gain weight on brown rice, tofu and vegetables. The stresses of poverty - and yes, of a poorly-structured home life which can be a cause or result of poverty - can trigger human bodies to hold on to calories (you never know where the next meal is coming from!) and contribute to inflammation, which can increase water retention in the tissues, among other things. Chronic systemic inflammation can contribute to rising cholesterol levels - cholesterol being one response of the body to the ravages of inflammation, not necessarily the cause of the diseases with which it is associated. (Coronary artery disease is increasingly seen as beginning with inflammation.)

The quality of what is being sold as "food" contributes as well. Faux sweeteners and fats, and corn/soy fattened animal products cause inflammation, whereas grass-pastured meats and dairy products carry anti-inflammatory CLA and omega-3 fats, as well as more favorable fatty acid and nutrient profiles. (From that perspective, McDonald's did us no favor switching from beef tallow to partially-hydrogenated oil for its fries.)

As much as 60% of the caloric offerings in our grocery stores, what Michael Pollan called "edible food-like substances" in In Defense of Food, comes from only three sources. They are: refined flour (any grain), refined sugar (any type) and vegetable oil - much or most of which has been partially-hydrogenated until recently. These are all derived from from our most highly subsidized crops.

Schools stopped making home economics classes mandatory around the same time they dropped shop classes. No one learns to cook, sew, or the basics of home plumbing and basic wiring at school anymore. (I learned almost nothing good about food from my stay-at-home mom.)

The theory that kids - or adults - are not moving as much as formerly may be contradicted by a huge study of actual metabolic rate measures recently completed by a university in - er - the Netherlands (I should bookmark this stuff when I read it). Apparently we are, on the whole, using more oxygen now than in the 80s when these measurements began.
Of course, it could be from hauling all that extra weight around!

The search for a single, politically/culturally charged cause for this problem is understandable. But is won't solve anything.

This is probably a silly question, Rod, but have you seen the documentary "King Corn?"

I do think the sheer amount of corn we end up consuming, especially in the form of sweeteners, isn't particularly good for us.

But I'm aware that the whole child/healthy eating thing is complicated. Too much nagging of kids to avoid sweets can lead to weight problems in later life, just as the formation of bad eating habits in childhood can. I once babysat for two sisters; the older was allowed to eat anything, because she was acceptably thin, while the younger, who was only a little overweight, had her calories weighed and measured and was scolded for asking for second helpings or a container of yogurt. That's not healthy, either, in a whole lot of ways.

One thing that has opened my eyes to the problems of children and healthy eating is being a parent. Here's the thing: I don't always have the best eating habits, and never ate many vegetables as a child (though my mother did prepare plenty of them). But my kids are astonishingly healthy eaters, and will eat foods I never would have touched, from eggplant to chickpeas to brown rice to spinach quiche (a no-crust recipe which is a healthy favorite). If I told you I did something special to encourage them to be intrepid eaters, I'd be lying. I consider myself a lucky parent, and sympathize with the parents of picky eaters, because I know they didn't "make" their children picky any more than I "made" my children adventurous.

So I know that sometimes the "mac n' cheese surrender" comes from moms and dads who are too tired to keep fighting over the requisite bites of carrot or celery or broccoli. I also believe that some of our nation's problems with food and obesity have more to do with the fact that we don't really know what an appropriate portion size is anymore, thanks to restaurants and convenience foods where a "single serving" is really enough for three people.

My friend Gwen always packs her daughter a healthy lunch. She found out at the end of school that another mom was always packing an extra "treat" for Gwen's daughter since she didn't bring that kind of stuff.

I hate this! Another mom was doing this for my two oldest kids (incidentally, it is one of the moms who sends Lunchables to school for lunch). She heard from her kids that my kids complain that they don't get as much as their friends and they don't get packaged stuff. So she was sending in extra packets of cookies and crispy snacks for them! After warning the kids didn't work (I found empty wrappers in their pants pockets, grr), I had to go straight to the mother and tell her to stop doing it. She was surprised that I objected.

Rod, I don't think healthy foods = expensive foods is as much of a myth as you think. I just pulled up my local grocery's flyer online, and let's see:

Armour Lunchmakers ("lunchable" type kits) - 12 for $12
Any fresh fish - $6.95/lb and up to $10.95/lb (and I'm in a big seafood area)
Boxed mac & cheese - on special, 20 for $10
Soda 12 for $12, orange juice 2 for $6
Lite, natural deli ham $6.97/lb
ground beef, $2.85/lb

Do you honestly not see how families with a single parent who works, or two parents who work, would go for the 50 cent box of mac and cheese? It's quick, it's cheap. You think these families can buy a pound of cod fillets at $8.95 per pound? Even ground beef, which is the nastiest type of beef you can get, is more expensive. Forget about chicken or seafood. Way out of range for working families.

Your example of shopping at Whole Foods is laughable, and I don't mean to sound snippy saying that. Most folks don't have one in reasonable distance to their home, and their prices are insane on many things. Steel cut oats, at my local grocery, is $5.95 for a tiny little box. Plain old Quaker oats are expensive enough = $4 for the big carton.

I'm not trying to excuse anyone here. Sure, I'm positive there are parents out there who feed their kids crap willingly and with no qualms. But I think you're being too hard on most parents, who, pressed for time, short on cash, have to buy the cheaper, easier things, which all too often are the unhealthiest items in the store.

"Oh good, another sarcastic, pointless comment from Daniel that adds nothing to the discussion."

Ain't from 'round here, are ya, boy...

For my family, the answer to the healthy food cost question is twofold. We buy high-quality and organic foods in lower volume; and we buy in bulk when it's the right stuff and supplement with homegrown stuff.

Since my family started buying organic, I've drastically cut down on the volume of food I buy, and I notice we have much less waste and everyone is enjoying the taste of the food much more. It's clearly more expensive, but even small children can taste the difference in high-quality food, and at places like Trader Joe's, we can get better value and better quality food.

I also tend to buy products in bulk whenever I can - that huge can of Italian tomatoes from Costco cost a few bucks, and it is going to be turned into gobs of tomato sauce for the winter that we'll all love. It's a weekend project that I look forward to in the fall and winter.

The basil I've been tending all summer is added to everything and it's organically grown right here in my yard. Not everyone has the space, but even a pot or two on a fire escape can yield a big pile of pesto. Best of all, my daughter loves being able to eat things that we grow here and her little pals are fascinated by our little yard's productivity. I feel like we get to pass along that message of healthy eating being fun to lots of kids that way.

First of all, you are really insalting the parents who can't help that thier kids are fat. A large number of fat kids don't really have thier parents to blame, it's just genetics. If their mom and dad are both fat, then most likely they will be fat. It's nobodies falt except the media's, telling people that the only way to be boautiful is to be stick thin. There are planty of nice looking chubby men and women out there, and people ignor them.

Parent's might have some effect on the childs health, but they don't have much of it. School lunches are well known to be bad for you, and school's cut back on P.E is making kids fatter more then their parents.

First of all, you are really insalting the parents who can't help that thier kids are fat. A large number of fat kids don't really have thier parents to blame, it's just genetics. If their mom and dad are both fat, then most likely they will be fat. It's nobodies falt except the media's, telling people that the only way to be boautiful is to be stick thin. There are planty of nice looking chubby men and women out there, and people ignor them.

Parent's might have some effect on the childs health, but they don't have much of it. School lunches are well known to be bad for you, and school's cut back on P.E is making kids fatter more then their parents.

Kids need to get outdoors and be a part of nature, we have lost the fact that all of us (50+) were told go play outside. Today that does not happen! Parents are scared....and children get fat.
Children learn so much by being outdoors and having unstructured play. They learn to make decisions, listen to others, how to get along and how to entertain themselves all this while doing whats good for their bodies. Summer camp is a great place for all this. I know I see it each and every summer at our Children's summer camp...Swift Nature Camp.

FAT TEENS R BETTER. THE FATTER THE BETTER. I AM A MORBIDLY OBESE TEEN 14 AND 395 POUNDS IT ROCKS