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Old 02-01-2010, 07:00 AM
 
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I can't help to notice when fat kids show up with their parents somewhere at some fastfood restaurant or candyshop...I just think "what the hell is that parent doing?" I mean some people seem to be trying to overfeed their kids... I'm not walking up to one of them pointing it out because it's not hard to figure what the reaction would be but I wish someone would have had a serious talk with my mother around when I started junior high...
I was overweight until I started to ignore the food my mother put on the table when I was 18 and used my own money to change the meals to a more nutritionally healthy kind and calculated the amounts of food I should eat...

Isn't it in every parents best intrest to accuire some basic nutritional knowledge beyond just knowing "vegetables good, Mcdonalds bad"?

Shouldn't there be some kind of reprecussion for parents who totally ignore it when their kids start looking like baloons?

Can some parent of obese kids explain how it ends up like that?

I'm just curious...Because in my opinion the selfimage, perspective on you from others as well as mental health can be greatly effected by poor physical health and obesity...
So what ou think?
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Old 02-01-2010, 07:52 AM
 
6,764 posts, read 22,012,768 times
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Not necessarily.
Anyone who knows about the complexity of weight gain and loss cannot just point a finger at a fat kid and say, "You have a bad mom."

How do you explain a family of 4 I know where 3/4 kids are normal weight (the second was heavier but slimmed down naturally at puberty). The baby of the family has always been big. He hardly eats sweets, cakes, or anything like icecream. His biggest indulgence is crackers.

I know his mom is a good mom who gives her kids well balanced meals.

Perhaps some parents are 'clueless' about nutrition. Giving Junior a coke instead of orange juice does not make them 'bad.' McDonald's may be an treat for some people, so don't judge them. (I have not been there in years. We don't eat 'fast food' in my house.)

In addition, I would add that good food, vegetables, meats, fruit costs a lot more 'over all' than junk food. If you have a family of 6 or so it's hard to feed them all balanced meals on a limited budget. And what about the teenagers who buy their own junk food? Are their parents 'bad?'
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:10 AM
 
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My oldest is normal weight. 5'6", 135 and very muscular. My middle is very thin. 5'7, 120. He looks like a toothpick. My youngest is somewhat chubby, 4'8" and 105.

The skinny one eats like a pig. The chubby one does not. The oldest was chubby until he hit puberty. The doctor told me not to worry about the slight pudge on the little guy as it will likely disappear when he hits a growth spurt.

Am I only a bad mommy to the little one because he is fat? BTW-they don't really like fast food. The chubby one likes it least of all.....
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:13 AM
 
Location: I think my user name clarifies that.
8,292 posts, read 26,572,992 times
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I've spent some time looking at old school pictures from when I was a kid (60s-70s) and even back to my parents' school pictures.

NO FAT KIDS.

Back then, there really wasn't any processed food, and there certainly weren't fast food joints. Also, there was nothing inside the house that would keep a kid sitting in there all day every day. So people ate healthier foods and exercised more. That's about the extent of it.

Now it's about convenience. Let's admit it: As a society, we're lazy. It's a heckuva lot easier to throw in a Totino's Frozen Pizza than to actually make a dinner.

I don't think it's about individual parents as much as our society as a whole.
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:33 AM
 
Location: NE PA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Niceguy89 View Post
I can't help to notice when fat kids show up with their parents somewhere at some fastfood restaurant or candyshop...I just think "what the hell is that parent doing?" ?
I think you may be a little too judgmental. When you see a parent with a kid at a fast food joint, how do you know how often that kid is eating fast food? If they're eating it regularly, then you have a point, but what if that parent just takes them there once a month or something? There's really no harm in fast food once in a while.
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:47 AM
Status: "Mistress of finance and foods." (set 18 days ago)
 
Location: Coastal Georgia
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I can't remember ever seeing a fat kid who doesn't have fat parents. So everyone in the family is eating the wrong things.
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:49 AM
 
Location: NE PA
7,931 posts, read 15,752,146 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gentlearts View Post
I can't remember ever seeing a fat kid who doesn't have fat parents. So everyone in the family is eating the wrong things.
Or maybe its just genetics. Not everyone who is overweight eats too much or doesn't exercise. Likewise, I know many skinny people who lead unhealthy lifestyles, eat garbage, smoke, drink their livers into a pickle, and never exercise.
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Old 02-01-2010, 08:56 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,042 posts, read 83,879,518 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks View Post
I've spent some time looking at old school pictures from when I was a kid (60s-70s) and even back to my parents' school pictures.

NO FAT KIDS.

Back then, there really wasn't any processed food, and there certainly weren't fast food joints. Also, there was nothing inside the house that would keep a kid sitting in there all day every day. So people ate healthier foods and exercised more. That's about the extent of it.

Now it's about convenience. Let's admit it: As a society, we're lazy. It's a heckuva lot easier to throw in a Totino's Frozen Pizza than to actually make a dinner.

I don't think it's about individual parents as much as our society as a whole.
Same here, same time frame. There was usually one fat boy and one fat girl in each class. We got exercise. Played tag, ran through the woods, climbed trees, roller-skated outside, rode bikes, played kickball in the street...my mother wouldn't let us stay inside and watch TV unless it was pouring rain outside. And some of us walked to school (my town was too small for schoolbuses--state law said you had to live 2 miles from the school to get service, and our town wasn't two miles wide at any point.) Anybody playing something called "Grand Theft Auto" was going to juvy, lol.

That was before anyone knew what cholesterol was or any kind of food pyramid had been invented, either. Not that it's a bad thing that now we know one shouldn't eat bacon three times a week or put chunks of butter on all the vegetables, but the exercise made a difference.
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Old 02-01-2010, 09:04 AM
 
Location: NE PA
7,931 posts, read 15,752,146 times
Reputation: 4425
Quote:
Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks View Post
I've spent some time looking at old school pictures from when I was a kid (60s-70s) and even back to my parents' school pictures.

NO FAT KIDS.

Back then, there really wasn't any processed food, and there certainly weren't fast food joints. Also, there was nothing inside the house that would keep a kid sitting in there all day every day. So people ate healthier foods and exercised more. That's about the extent of it.

Now it's about convenience. Let's admit it: As a society, we're lazy. It's a heckuva lot easier to throw in a Totino's Frozen Pizza than to actually make a dinner.

I don't think it's about individual parents as much as our society as a whole.
When I was a kid in the 80s, there were definitely fat kids, and guess what, they existed in the 1960s and 70s too...and now that my kids are in school, it doesn't seem like there are many more fat kids now than when I was in school.

But I will agree, people are eating more processed garbage these days...and this ties into my posts on other threads about kids being stuck in daycare when both parents are working....if more parents sacrificed so a parent could be home with their kids rather than shoving them into daycare for 9 hours a day, then maybe they'd have the time to actually cook a meal rather than bringing home pizza, McDonald's, or making microwave dinners.
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Old 02-01-2010, 09:30 AM
 
43,011 posts, read 107,636,560 times
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The fact can't be ignored that obesity in children have become a serious problem in the United States.

Children weren't obese when I was growing up, and children weren't active in sports like children are today.

Sure, there were some children who were a little chunky prior to a growth spurt, but few children were outright obese like children today at such a high percentage.

If someone went to school in the 70s with a large percentage of fat children, I think that would have been an ethnic or cultural issue for the population in that specific school.

For example, Italian families tended to have children with more meat on their bones when I was a child, and the African American diet has never been healthy.

It's not genetics! Genetics and disease are crutches and excuses for overweight people.

Meanwhile, being overweight causes diseases (diabetes) often blamed for being overweight.

Ever see an entire family that is fat? That's not genetics. That's diet.
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