Are your children destined for a ‘fat future’? • 29.09.09
When I get a spare moment (and lately these spare moments have been rather frequent), I like to read the news online. This is because I am unemployed and can’t afford newspapers. Secondly, tree huggers will say it’s more environmentally friendly as trees will not be felled to makes the paper the news is printed on. Then, the carbon emissions are lower as there will be no physical travel in bringing the news to my computer. To be perfectly honest, the first reason is the most important to me right now.
So I was looking around on the BBC News website and saw this article about how children are exercising less. The information included in the article was provided by the British Heart Foundation. According to the BHF, only one in eight children are getting the recommended 60 minutes of exercise they need everyday to avoid obesity. What is laughable is that 20% of the children surveyed thought you only needed to do exercise if you were fat. When I was a child, my sister and I ran everywhere! We were incredibly active and we were skinny minnies until we reached our teens but even then, we used to cycle a lot, walk around with friends etc
I'm the one on the right!
so neither of us really were starting to gain weight until we began exams for our GCSEs and then it all went tits up as I went up to 157lbs!
What surprises me is that the active childhood that my sister and I had is not a normal upbringing for all children these days. One of the links on the side of the BHF story on the BBC website was to another story about childhood obesity that confirmed what I was already thinking. Responsibility lies entirely with the parents. The second story was published a year ago but this study suggested that parents thought it was NORMAL for their children to be chubby and are less receptive to suggestions that their little darlings could be suffering from childhood obesity. Parents are less likely to accept that their children ARE overweight and are hostile to the suggestion that their spawn are in fact, fat.
What could this mean to a generation of children suffering from their parent’s ignorance or delusions of perfection? Overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults and children with obese parents are more likely to grow up to be obese themselves. There is an overwhelming attitude amongst people who think that their weight problems are ‘hormonal’ or ‘glandular’. This is actually, much rarer than you may think and hoards of people have the potential to lose weight and become healthy and inspire their children to also lose weight and become healthy. There is simply a lack of inclination to do it.
Nobody wants their children to look like this
If you are a parent reading this, take an unbiased look at your child and ask yourself if they could benefit from losing weight. As long as a child is eating enough calories then they could run around like mad things all day and not suffer for it. Obesity charities blame the food companies aiming fatty and sugary products at children. Bright and lively cartoon characters advertising a naughty snack just makes children want it and the government are very aware of this but were very slow to react. Parents give in to ‘pester power’ and kids know it because they’re hooked on the sugar rush.
Ultimately, parents should be in charge but regularly, when visiting the supermarket, I see scores of children who have the upper hand over their parents. If parents are to reclaim control and help their children live slim and healthy lives then they cannot give in to demands for crisps, sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Put treats out of their reach or better still, don’t keep goodies in the house. Don’t give them money for sweets and ask relatives to help you reinforce this rule. There is nothing wrong with being the bad guy in your children’s eyes when it comes to their health. They will thank you for it when they are slim teenager who don’t struggle in PE lessons. If you give your children the tools to live a healthy lifestyle they are less likely as adults to become obese and suffer from all the possible illnesses related to obesity.
When you spend time with them, make the activities you do centred around exercise. For example, it doesn’t cost anything to go down to the park and play tag, musical chairs or kick a ball around. Obesity can be prevented, you don’t have to view it as a problem that doesn’t apply to you until your thighs rub together and you have to put talcum powder in the folds of your stomach fat. As they say, prevention is better than the cure and you can stop your children from enduring a fat future by being stronger and denying them sugary processed food as regular snacks and encouraging them to keep active. In the process, you’ll eat better and keep more active too and everyone will be in a better position to enjoy a good life with good health.
