Noticing very chunky young kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS/Fairfax County Health Dept has a very quiet ongoing study re: BMI of kindergartners. BMI listed on kindergarten physical (entry) form is entered and compiled.

It’s alarming to see obese, breathless kindergarteners and very young children. They also sit out at recess, refuse to participate in P.E. and are sweaty just walking to classes.

I teach kindergarten in a different district. I work with small groups of students so after I pick up my groups, we go upstairs to my room. It's a total of 30 steps or so with a landing after the first 20. I've learned to stop for a rest break on the landing since so many kids are breathless by that point. Plus I've got the kids who still don't alternate feet on the stairs so I have to stop for them too. If I'm the fittest person out of six people, that's shocking to me. I'm no spring chicken (I'm 62 yrs old). My brothers and I would play a game running up and down the stairs when we were kids. It's sad to see these young kids in such terrible shape.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

DP. I didn't read PP as blaming the parents. The government chooses what it will subsidize in school breakfasts and lunches. For example, large corporate food producers got the government to count pizza as a vegetable in school lunches. It's all politics and it's all about the money. Even if you take the parents out of the equation and the school is providing 2 of 3 meals, the kids aren't always getting healthy food.

On another note, there are food scientists who are PAID to make food as addictive as possible. And it's not the healthy stuff.

This country will never get healthy until food producers are held to better standards. And that's never going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason for this societal problem is on display in this thread. Nothing but denial, excuses, and blame-shifting.

You are reading negativity into people searching for reasons.

I do not believe most of the respondents on this thread are sincerely searching for reasons. Unless you mean reasons why it’s not their fault?

If your kid is overweight he’s eating too much. You can talk about chemicals and sports and medications and ultra processed versus organics until the cows come home, but if you’re avoiding looking at the actual number of calories consumed it’s most likely because you KNOW your kid is just eating too much.

+1. This just goes back to the current parenting problem overall right now. An inability to tell the child "No." and mean it.

I have no problem telling my kids no. But the school and after care feed them crap. I send a homemade lunch and snacks but even in my affluent area many parents don’t. The school breakfast and lunch are highly processed sugar laden junk. After care is just as bad. The after care actually declared last year it intended to serve healthy snacks - which it defined as go gurt and corn chips instead of Doritos. Ridiculous. So far my kids are skinny and hopefully they’ll remain so since my spouse’s family are all slim and they seem to take after that side in terms of build. But it’s a constant fight and hard for them to understand why mean mom won’t let them buy lunch daily like their friends. Yes I am willing to be the mean mom but I do wonder if they’ll develop a complex about it, plus so many other parents don’t have the energy for this fight when the environment they’re in is problematic and inescapable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

No, sorry, that is BS. Basics are cheap. Eggs, milk, oatmeal, beans are cheap. Immigrants and poor people in less developed countries manage to cook basic simple food on a tight budget. But American poor people can’t manage this. Easier to hit up the drive thru. It’s easy to eat a lot of junk when using the government money and free school food

I don’t know. I remember around 2008 when the housing crisis hit and my husband lost his company and left with some big debt. I could no longer go to the store and just buy groceries without looking at the prices. One time, and I’ll never forget it, I had $18 and some change to get two or three days worth of food. The generic whole wheat bread was twice as expensive as the generic white bread so I got the cheap white bread. I had to think of food that fills a stomach not quality food. Basic pasta with cheap tomato sauce, they had buy one hot dog pack get one free. No snacks or deserts. No fresh vegetables.

This lasted about three months of a very limited budget. I can’t imagine a lifetime. I suppose there are smart cooks out there who can take the basics and make something appetizing out of it but I couldn’t.

Poor quality low nutrient food can absolutely negatively impact your health in the long term. It will NOT, however, make you obese. Unless you eat TOO MUCH of it. Unless you think that a slice of white bread contains substantially more calories than wheat bread? (Hint: it doesn’t- maybe 10-20 calories per slice depending on the brand.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

DP. I didn't read PP as blaming the parents. The government chooses what it will subsidize in school breakfasts and lunches. For example, large corporate food producers got the government to count pizza as a vegetable in school lunches. It's all politics and it's all about the money. Even if you take the parents out of the equation and the school is providing 2 of 3 meals, the kids aren't always getting healthy food.

On another note, there are food scientists who are PAID to make food as addictive as possible. And it's not the healthy stuff.

This country will never get healthy until food producers are held to better standards. And that's never going to happen.

It can happen. But you have to vote for it. Do you do that? Do you vote for the party that reels in corporations with regulations or the one who enables them to make us sick while they get rich? (I will not pretend either party is perfect at this, but one is certainly better than the other)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it is still shocking to me OP. Especially when I see chunky kids with thin parents.

But we aren't allowed to talk about it and have to just pretend we don't notice.

Oh really? I always comment very loudly. My goal is to shame the children into developing eating disorders and to shame the parents into enabling them. (That is irony - I'm trying to hold up a mirror to these truly disgusting comments).

[Anonymous]

I think it's also car culture and not letting kids run around. I've talked to adults who won't want to walk half a mile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

No, sorry, that is BS. Basics are cheap. Eggs, milk, oatmeal, beans are cheap. Immigrants and poor people in less developed countries manage to cook basic simple food on a tight budget. But American poor people can’t manage this. Easier to hit up the drive thru. It’s easy to eat a lot of junk when using the government money and free school food

I don’t know. I remember around 2008 when the housing crisis hit and my husband lost his company and left with some big debt. I could no longer go to the store and just buy groceries without looking at the prices. One time, and I’ll never forget it, I had $18 and some change to get two or three days worth of food. The generic whole wheat bread was twice as expensive as the generic white bread so I got the cheap white bread. I had to think of food that fills a stomach not quality food. Basic pasta with cheap tomato sauce, they had buy one hot dog pack get one free. No snacks or deserts. No fresh vegetables.

This lasted about three months of a very limited budget. I can’t imagine a lifetime. I suppose there are smart cooks out there who can take the basics and make something appetizing out of it but I couldn’t.

Poor quality low nutrient food can absolutely negatively impact your health in the long term. It will NOT, however, make you obese. Unless you eat TOO MUCH of it. Unless you think that a slice of white bread contains substantially more calories than wheat bread? (Hint: it doesn’t- maybe 10-20 calories per slice depending on the brand.)

There are foods that low income people count on that have a high caloric count. My small example was about poor quality food not excessive calories but I can see how that could happen over a long period of time. I know quite a few families from South America who are living in this country, some illegally, some not. They are all in good shape, not overweight. It’s more of an American problem not a genetic one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

DP. I didn't read PP as blaming the parents. The government chooses what it will subsidize in school breakfasts and lunches. For example, large corporate food producers got the government to count pizza as a vegetable in school lunches. It's all politics and it's all about the money. Even if you take the parents out of the equation and the school is providing 2 of 3 meals, the kids aren't always getting healthy food.

On another note, there are food scientists who are PAID to make food as addictive as possible. And it's not the healthy stuff.

This country will never get healthy until food producers are held to better standards. And that's never going to happen.

It can happen. But you have to vote for it. Do you do that? Do you vote for the party that reels in corporations with regulations or the one who enables them to make us sick while they get rich? (I will not pretend either party is perfect at this, but one is certainly better than the other)

Neither party cares about this. It's free market capitalism. Michelle Obama, to her credit, tried her best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

No, sorry, that is BS. Basics are cheap. Eggs, milk, oatmeal, beans are cheap. Immigrants and poor people in less developed countries manage to cook basic simple food on a tight budget. But American poor people can’t manage this. Easier to hit up the drive thru. It’s easy to eat a lot of junk when using the government money and free school food

I don’t know. I remember around 2008 when the housing crisis hit and my husband lost his company and left with some big debt. I could no longer go to the store and just buy groceries without looking at the prices. One time, and I’ll never forget it, I had $18 and some change to get two or three days worth of food. The generic whole wheat bread was twice as expensive as the generic white bread so I got the cheap white bread. I had to think of food that fills a stomach not quality food. Basic pasta with cheap tomato sauce, they had buy one hot dog pack get one free. No snacks or deserts. No fresh vegetables.

This lasted about three months of a very limited budget. I can’t imagine a lifetime. I suppose there are smart cooks out there who can take the basics and make something appetizing out of it but I couldn’t.

Poor quality low nutrient food can absolutely negatively impact your health in the long term. It will NOT, however, make you obese. Unless you eat TOO MUCH of it. Unless you think that a slice of white bread contains substantially more calories than wheat bread? (Hint: it doesn’t- maybe 10-20 calories per slice depending on the brand.)

There are foods that low income people count on that have a high caloric count. My small example was about poor quality food not excessive calories but I can see how that could happen over a long period of time. I know quite a few families from South America who are living in this country, some illegally, some not. They are all in good shape, not overweight. It’s more of an American problem not a genetic one.

You’ve never seen a fat Mexican ?

[Anonymous]

There a lot of reasons but some are:

- overly catering to kids’ preferences. I’m 44 and my parents served what they wanted for meals. If we didn’t like it- oh well. Stuff like frozen pizza or chicken nuggets was only for maybe Friday nights or something easy for the occasional babysitter.

-so much snacking. School, after school activities, kids sports etc. This was not the norm at all when I was growing up. We ate at home afterward except for the occasional class party or seasonal team party.

-so much eating out as the norm, and so many choices. Eating out was usually for special occasions, an occasional treat or travel when I was growing up. Definitely less often than weekly. For the most part, anything made at home will be healthier. For example even if cheeseburgers are served at home, they will be smaller than what you get at a restaurant and minus a giant serving of French fries. At least that is the case for us.

-lack of cooking skills. So many people don’t know how to cook at all. My old fashioned working class dad (who didn’t cook all that often- was not raised to do so) had better cooking skills than the average young parent today.

-and the big one: people are BUSY. Especially parents. My parents both worked FT but they weren’t busy running us to activities most evenings and weekends either. Some parents did but it wasn’t the norm. A lot of parents are so frazzled with the hectic scheduling these days and end up doing frozen entrees, fast food etc.

[Anonymous]

Kids aren't 30 pounds overweight from the school lunch, it's from all the eating they do outside of school paired with almost no physical activity. School lunch is 5 meals a week, it's the other 16 meals (and many more snacks) that pack on the pounds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

No, sorry, that is BS. Basics are cheap. Eggs, milk, oatmeal, beans are cheap. Immigrants and poor people in less developed countries manage to cook basic simple food on a tight budget. But American poor people can’t manage this. Easier to hit up the drive thru. It’s easy to eat a lot of junk when using the government money and free school food

I don’t know. I remember around 2008 when the housing crisis hit and my husband lost his company and left with some big debt. I could no longer go to the store and just buy groceries without looking at the prices. One time, and I’ll never forget it, I had $18 and some change to get two or three days worth of food. The generic whole wheat bread was twice as expensive as the generic white bread so I got the cheap white bread. I had to think of food that fills a stomach not quality food. Basic pasta with cheap tomato sauce, they had buy one hot dog pack get one free. No snacks or deserts. No fresh vegetables.

This lasted about three months of a very limited budget. I can’t imagine a lifetime. I suppose there are smart cooks out there who can take the basics and make something appetizing out of it but I couldn’t.

I used to shop on very limited funds and I was not using my money to buy bread lmao.

For breakfasts, you can buy a large canister of oatmeal at Aldi for pretty cheap. Beans and rice aren’t expensive. Shop sales, frozen veggies…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a high poverty school and by 5th-6th grade, nearly every student is overweight. It's sad. Some of them stayed overweight as they grew but some of them were a normal weight and then just packed on the pounds.

Schools are a huge part of the problem. Our high poverty school has free breakfast and lunch for all. It’s all garbage food. Considering the high obesity rate-kids aren’t starving, they are overfed. Schools need to keep it simple, have a couple heathy options and that is it. White milk, apples, peanut butter/cold cut sandwich. And no chips/candy as prizes and incentives for everything

You just made it clear you don't actually understand what food insecurity is like. It is not wasting away into thinness. It is the inability to afford healthy food. That can come with a lack of TIME as well. Shopping, cooking and food prep takes time, which many struggling families don't have. Have you ever thought about what the food in your house would look like if you have to take public transportation to collect it?

It is not simply "lazy poor parents feed their kids chips and soda all the time". It's much more complicated than that. But it gets you all off the hook to vote for people who might actually HELP these children if you can just blame their lazy, fat parents.

No, sorry, that is BS. Basics are cheap. Eggs, milk, oatmeal, beans are cheap. Immigrants and poor people in less developed countries manage to cook basic simple food on a tight budget. But American poor people can’t manage this. Easier to hit up the drive thru. It’s easy to eat a lot of junk when using the government money and free school food

I don’t know. I remember around 2008 when the housing crisis hit and my husband lost his company and left with some big debt. I could no longer go to the store and just buy groceries without looking at the prices. One time, and I’ll never forget it, I had $18 and some change to get two or three days worth of food. The generic whole wheat bread was twice as expensive as the generic white bread so I got the cheap white bread. I had to think of food that fills a stomach not quality food. Basic pasta with cheap tomato sauce, they had buy one hot dog pack get one free. No snacks or deserts. No fresh vegetables.

This lasted about three months of a very limited budget. I can’t imagine a lifetime. I suppose there are smart cooks out there who can take the basics and make something appetizing out of it but I couldn’t.

Poor quality low nutrient food can absolutely negatively impact your health in the long term. It will NOT, however, make you obese. Unless you eat TOO MUCH of it. Unless you think that a slice of white bread contains substantially more calories than wheat bread? (Hint: it doesn’t- maybe 10-20 calories per slice depending on the brand.)

+1 people really misunderstand the cause of overweight. I regularly meet people who are significantly overweight and eat home cooked, healthy foods. Most children are born with an innate sense of fullness that is overridden by the time they reach adulthood. I see well-meaning parents all the time giving their children healthy “insurance” snacks before they go someplace (“you will be hungry later!”) which is literally teaching the child to eat when they are not hungry. Or they force their child to eat breakfast despite the fact that they had a huge dinner with their friends the night before and aren’t hungry. Stop obsessing over food and your children won’t obsess over it.

[Anonymous]

I would love to see every obese child qualify for pediatric physical therapy. We did PT for one child (who happened to be obese) and it coincidentally solved his obesity problem. Signing up for sports never did it, because he was not moving his body properly. Once he could move easily he became enthusiastic in PE and recess, and the pounds shed away naturally. I guess extra weight puts a load on the joints of children just like it does with adults.