The upshot is this. I f you look at a fat 8 + year old it’s easy to blame the mom and dad for “making them fat” or serving horrific meals etc., but in many cases I would venture to say the kid is simply going after food like I did, and unless your parents lock your household access down you will find ways to get the food you want. Multiple bowls of Wheaties was my favorite. Adolescent kids are not little robots or locked down slaves. If you see a fat kid don’t automatically assume the parents are entirely in control of their consumption habits. The only way that’s going to happen is if the kid is treated like a prisoner and the parents are willing to live an authoritarian lock down existence for the sake of controlling their food consumption. Must people simply can’t live that way
Yeah okay but why are kids attracted to specific type of foods. You were attracted to Wheaties, primarily carbs. You also mentioned you could down a couple sandwiches though you did mention the inside contents but its sandwiched with bread, another high carb food.
Mine was flour and sugar and like you was very active but always weighed more then my peers. I was put on diets when young, yada yada. But its just not about what you eat or how much you eat issue, its why you are drawn to and consume certain foods and what need is met by eating those foods. That is where the parent steps in.
As a kid its not a question you can answer but a parent, all things being equal, has the cognitive skills to see problematic eating behaviors developing. If a parent fails to address or attempt to alter problematic behavior then most if not all the responsibility can be put on them. I did not know it at the time but as an adult I learned that sugar and flour were my heroin. I used them as a tool to feed a deeper need. If my parents realized that potential and intervened could it have helped prevent my eventual 350lb frame? dunno, but them doing nothing did not slow it down any. Without going in detail, the eating met an emotional need, an emotional need my parents helped create!!
Side note, lost all the weight many moons ago and more importantly understood how I got there in the first place.
I always assumed genetics had a lot to do with this stuff. I’ve never had to worry about what I eat, same with my kids, my siblings, all of my extended family, about 40 people I can think of and not a single person fat.
Seems like it’s unlikely that is just due to good habits, or maybe the genetics make the good habits really easy to establish, like a continuum, we’re on the easy end of the spectrum.
My stepson would eat everything in the house. No yelling or punishment or begging would help. If we turned our back or went to sleep he would raid the fridge. Not just unhealthy snacks (which we didn’t buy) but leftovers, lunch for the next week, tonight’s dinner… It was either watch him 24 hours a day or put locks on the fridge and cabinets. We bought locks.
I don’t think we can blame genetics. 50 years ago people just weren’t as fat. The same genes are being passed down today.
When I was a kid, there were maybe 1 or 2 fat kids in a class. Kids ate differently. We were trained not to take food without asking. We didn’t drink soda at school, and often not at home. (In my house, Coke was limited to grownups, and if you were very good and asked nicely, you might get half a 6 oz glass of Coke, or some 7 Up if you were queasy.) Dinner was prepared at home and the portions were normal-sized. People now are aghast at the starchy casseroles and things people ate way back when, but for all those carbs, people were thinner.
There was no magic formula. People ate less and moved more. Kids played outside after school and on the weekends. Food was less pre-packaged. Restaurants were for special occasions. Working people packed a lunch, so portions were controlled.
Parents of diabetic children manage have to teach them incredible discipline at a young age, and for the most part they manage to do it. Parents of children with severe food allergies manage to keep household food restrictions in place without everyone “suffering.” Parents of anorexic or bulimic kids generally get professional help from eating disorder specialists ASAP. People can and do raise kids with diet concerns, all the time.
In my household, we buy one bag of chips, one frozen family-sized entree, one box of OJ, and one pint of ice cream weekly, and 100% of the rest of the food is produce, unprocessed meat, sauces or whole grains that need cooking. If the chips and OJ are gone on Monday, that’s it for the week. Oddly, we aren’t “suffering.” We eat lots of healthy delicious meals. So yeah, go ahead and let your hungry nine year old go nuts at my house. Unless they really like to cook, they aren’t going to find a way to binge.
Furthermore, there are lots of steps between “total access to piles of food,” and “locks on the fridge.” You can portion food into reasonable serving sizes, and hold the kids responsible if they eat more than their share. If your kid binges on sandwiches, make up a week’s worth of sandwiches and hold them accountable if those all magically disappear. Kids want to do all kinds of harmful behavior when they are home alone- they want to surf sketchy websites, play sketchy video games, play with matches, whatever. But if they do that, they usually get in trouble.
And that can be done without it being a big emotional thing. I know a lot of parents get their own emotions mixed up in their kids’ weight, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Parents bear the responsibility of teaching their kids healthy habits (and not just eating habits).
My parents weren’t big on the holiday gorgefests so popular with many Americans. The most indulgent feasts from my chilhood were on day trips. We would buy a big bag of fruit at a roadside stand and polish it all off while sitting in the car. That would be lunch, or even dinner. A lot of people shudder when learning that I ‘missed out’ on all those cherished experiences, but I don’t see what the big deal is about eating so much turkey that you can’t walk. Back when we all did manual labor for 12 hours a day, that kind of eating made sense. But it also made sense to consume alcohol (for the calories, and the safety over water) in quantities that would make people today shudder. Traditions change, but many Americans still eat like their great-grand parents did.
I once dined with two friends and their young adult daughter, who has long struggled with her weight. She asked me exercise advice, which I gladly provided.
It took some effort for me to keep a straight face, because during our discussion on how to lose weight, the daughter put away not one, but two full high-calorie meals (fried rice and an order of ribs).
For some people, food sends them back to a time when everything came from mom and dad, and could be negotiated (maybe too indulgently). Folks, your metabolism doesn’t negotiate.
That said, I think it may be harder today than in the past to teach kids good eating habits. We didn’t have snack machines in junior high, or even in high school. Someone mentioned Golden Corrale upthread. ‘All-you-can-eat’ places today have WAY more selections than they used to, and I can’t think that doesn’t lead to eating more.
I have never really understood the concept ofkid judt helping themselves to food. When I was A childA. Mum didnt keep much in the way of snack foods around. B.taking food without permission was “stealing” and punishable as such.If we wanted something to eat we asked permission first. If we were home alone over a meal time mum was very clear about what we could have acess to. Even as an adult I wouldn’t just take something from my parents fridge - that would be disrespectful.
Oh and I can count on one hand the number of times I had McDonalds as a child.
I may be overweight now but it sure isnt my parents fault.
Making mummy the food gatekeeper is hardly going to be feasible for most working households. There’s not really any good way of getting around the fact that sooner or later, kids are going to have to learn to how to select and prepare their own foodstuffs.
I was a latch key kid, and I was expected to keep myself fed during summer days and the like. But food costs money, and you can bet that if I sucked down a loaf of bread or polished off the Wheaties, there would be trouble. Unless you have a half dozen kids, it’s not that hard to figure out where the groceries are going.
Uh, probably most chubby kids do not have fathers who are in a position to pre-prep or approve everything they put in their mouths, no. Did you forget to read the post I was responding to? I recommend doing so. You will find that such a practice greatly aids reply comprehension!
Fascinating! Tell me, if they had found you eating too many groceries, do you suppose your parents would have gone the cupboard padlock route, or would they have just stopped buying foods that take less than 45 minutes to prepare? Both methods certainly have their charms!
I don’t know about sven’s family , but in my house neither one would have happened. There wouldn’t have been enough money to replace the bread or Wheaties until the next scheduled purchase, so I guess I would have been skipping either breakfast or lunch for a few days.
I do agree that once kids get to be a certain age, it’s hard for the parents to control their eating habits.
One of the downsides of living in the city is easy assess to corner stores. My mother forbade us to snack on the chips and stuff she’d buy for our lunches, so when we got to be teenagers, what did we do? We’d go across the street and buy Little Debbies, Cheetos, sodas, and everything else.
We didn’t get an allowance. We’d simply root in between couch cushions and coat pockets until we acquired the two dollars or so required to stuff our faces.
I blame my parents, kinda sorta. Perhaps if there had been snacks in the house, we wouldn’t have felt so compelled to go to the store. But I suspect the temptation of Little Debbie would have hard for us to turn down regardless what my parents had done.
I’d be in the same boat. The family would probably have to eat Top Ramen to make up for whatever that food was for. Food didn’t appear in our cupboard by magic, and wasting it through mindless eating would be no different than wasting any other household commodity. I was quite aware that food came out of a limited household budget and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
honestly, I think a lot of it is “hidden” calories, e.g. sugary drinks. I’ve been a fatass most of my life. growing up, I don’t think I was fed any more than any other kid in the general area. and, since I was a kid in the '80s and my school didn’t even have a cafeteria nevermind vending machines, I can’t blame uncontrolled snacking. growing up, we weren’t poor. We sure as hell weren’t well off, but we had most of what we needed. We also had some things we wanted. we weren’t gorging ourselves on steak; if we had steak at all it was tough cuts of round. but you know what? I was still a fat little shit. and based on what I remember eating at home and the lunches I was packed, I can only think a big part of the problem was sugary drinks like pop and kool-aid. Even in 2013 I think too many people fail to realize just how many calories they’re drinking; I’ve gone grocery shopping and seen a way-too-young couple herding their toddler around, and said toddler was swigging from a bottle of Mountain Dew. and IMO that’s the over-arching problem. we need to drink water, and we’re drinking sugar water. and when you get a significant portion of your caloric needs from what you drink, well, then anything you eat is piling on top of that.
then I realize that those kids who could shovel food down their mouths all day long back then are now all pretty much miserable diabetics with distended guts. And I feel a little bit better about losing 40 lbs over the last few years, and being at a stable weight for the last 11 months. yeah, it means I subsist on 1100 calories a day (and felt like shit losing that weight) but I don’t have to lift up anything to find my todger.
If you say so. However, staple food prices in present-day America are low enough that they simply no longer serve as a useful consumption limiter in most households. The average American household spends less than six percent of their annual income on food, over 25% less than they did just thirty years ago.
In fact, as far as I know, Americans spend a lower percentage on their budget on food than people do in any other country. Although restaurants, industries and consumers find this a most gratifying state of affairs, when taken to such extremes it ends up not being such a great thing, since as you might expect, people who live in countries where food is more expensive relative to their average income don’t tend to get very fat. Check out this Mother Jones article for more information on the matter.
I wonder whether smaller family sizes contribute to childhood obesity. Even when I was a kid, I could eat like a man, but there were five other people in the house who also had to eat. I didn’t get fat until I was making my own money and could eat whatever I wanted, in whatever quantity I wanted.
USDA numbers for food insecurity in 2011 can be found here: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-report/err141.aspx
14.9 percent (17.9 million households) were food insecure. Food-insecure households (those with low and very low food security) had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. The change from the 2010 estimate (14.5 percent) was not statistically significant, meaning that the difference may be due to sampling variation.
• In 2011, 5.7 percent of U.S. households (6.8 million households and one-third of all food-insecure households) had very low food security. In these households, the food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year due to limited resources.