Can fat kids hunt ?

[Pads]

[:(] Has any one seen this disgusting programme ?, Will TV stations stop at nothing to get viewers?

Where as I have every sympathy for people with healthy problems, These kids have all amitted to just being lazy and eating to much. Where do parents get off allowing there kids while still young and under there control to end up like this? They are now set in to this pattern probaly for life, it will take a strong personality to break this habit of eating.

I know I will probally get stick from a few parents of fat kids because they cant see what there doing, or people who think  "oh its not there fault" !!! Well who's is it ? I find it hard to understand  that they dont care what they are doing to there healthy for the future .

Sorry rant over , but it makes me so mad surely this is child abuse ?[:(]    

[mint]

Pads

You can have a go at me too if you like.  I'm afraid that I found it all very funny.  To see those 2 fat girls blubbing especially the one who wants to go home and insists she will lose the weight by herself was just too laughable for words.  Sorry if I come across as being totally uncaring.  Their problem is so BIG (yes, pun intended) that if I didn't laugh, I'd cry![:D]

[Bob T]

Have to say that Pads is spot on. 99.9% of larger people are large because the take in too much energy and expend too little. That is the way any machine or animal works. All the metabolism and large bones excuses are rubbish, how do bones get large without a large intake of energy?

[Ford Anglia]

[quote user="Bob T"]Have to say that Pads is spot on. 99.9% of larger people are large because the take in too much energy and expend too little. That is the way any machine or animal works. All the metabolism and large bones excuses are rubbish, how do bones get large without a large intake of energy?

[/quote]

Ha! Would it were so............it's not my BONES I'm worried about, (I'm 5'8"), it's my BELLY............and yes, I do so like my beer, wine cocktails, pastis, Baileys.........

[woolybanana]

I qualify as a big fat f a r t or so the doctor would have you believe. And the answer is there in Lord of the Rings: We Hunt Fat Kids

[Just Katie]

Sorry but I really don't know what programme you are talking about but I would like to agree with Pads that allowing children to run free with their diet is indeed child abuse in my eyes too although in most cases unintentional.  It really alarms me as I walk around the supermarket and see so many obese children (mainly teenage girls in Wales).  The contents of their trolley tells it all.

I grew up in a generation where all my meals were cooked from fresh as a child and I think parents working longer hours is no excuse.  It takes no time to throw a steak, chop or piece of fish in the oven and boil up a few frozen veg midweek.  OK, so most kids would prefer Burger King but old habits die hard.  I have tried to feed mine fresh simple food and, they would prefer this to anything..... thank goodness.

Finally I overheard a mother saying to her 6 year old in Tesco "Chantelle, do you want crumpets or supernoodles for tea"? [blink]

[Bob T]

Watched a TV program the other day, I think that it may have been Floyd in Corsica. He was looking into local dishes. On his travels he bumped into a Corsican school party and asked the teacher what the childrens favorite foods were. The children all answered the question individually, and every answer was one of the local dishes. Floyd commented that the same question asked in the UK would have been answered with burger and chips by most of the children.

Makes you think!

[mint]

Katie, there was a prog last night (sorry, don't know channel or name of prog) which I accidentally came upon playing about with the remote.  OH safely out the way at his table tennis club so I got to zap all the different channels.

There was this group of teenagers, all obese, some horribly so, who were taken to live with the natives in Borneo in these tropical "long houses" with communal cooking and eating areas.  The idea was that they'ld lose weight if they were taken from their usual McDonald outlets and made to hunt or forage for their foods.

Pads clearly got very cross with the parents but I couldn't take it too seriously because if I did, I'd be a ranting lunatic.  So, I just giggled my way through most of the programme.  They were all blubber and some of them blubbed and said it was all horrible and they wanted to go home and wished they'd never come.

The Borneo teenagers, on the other hand, were svelte and healthy and the contrast was so great, that the programme, for me, took on a surreal and grotesque air.

Of course, it was all done to titivate (?spelling), turn us into voyeurs and self-satisfied know-alls (I would never have let my kids got like that, etc. etc)

But I love what you have said about Chantelle's mam.  I am sure I have heard her in Morrisons (perhaps more Morrisons than Tesco, don't you think?) By the way, why are all the girls called names like Kylie and Charisse and the boys Tyson and Sylvester?  Oops, SHUT UP, sweet, are you looking to be massacred or something?

Anyway, Katie, that's all I can tell you about it.

[LEO]

In my mixed class at primary school in 1953 (47 pupils) , there was one fat boy and one girl who was plump)

In secondary school ( there was one boy who was fat )

I cannot remember any girls who where overweight

There was no "Macdonalds," no "Indian takeaways" or "Chinese takeaways" and , we all walked to school

When we left school we walked to the bus stop top go to to work ,

We walked home from a night out .

We , over 50's lived in a differrent culture.

[Pads]

Your right Leo I dont remenber any real fat kids in my school, When  we were kids my mum use to tie dusters to our feet and turn on the record player and we would polish the canvas floors with our feet while we danced !! and cutting the lawn meant pushing the mower. We walked 2 miles to school. with a jacket potatoe in our hands to keep them warm on winter days, then eaten later on for our dinner. the school had playing fields for us to run around in. and PE was bloody hard work. we only had cake on a sunday and sweets once a week to take to the pictures. meals were mostly vegtables.  those were the days hey ?        

[Just Katie]

[quote user="sweet 17"]

Of course, it was all done to titivate (?spelling), turn us into voyeurs and self-satisfied know-alls (I would never have let my kids got like that, etc. etc)

 

[/quote]

Well it certainly did that for me. [:$]

Seriously though, I find it heartbreaking when parents parade children on these types of freakshow documentaries.  Television companies are very clever in tricking people.  Ooops, there I go again. [:D]

[Jonzjob]

One of the schools that I went to was a 5 mile cycle ride from Albrighton to Shifnal. It certainly kept me fit.

Pads, vegetables! We had to go out and catch our own terribledaktiles and beat them to deaf wiv our bear 'ands. Non of them mamby pamby vegetabels!![8-|]

How many times do you see children (goats have kids) playing out in the street now. They are all inside with their haunted fish tanks with the gameboy or whatever it's called.

As for the supermarket, when my daughter goes shopping with Samuel, my grandson. If she gets any sweet peppers then by the time they get to the checkout there is one less caiuse 4 year old Samuel will have seen one of them off! He loves his fruit and veg...

[Deimos]

I wonder how much the problem originates with the parents and how much with commercialism and business profit.  I have no knowledge or experience in this area so these are just my thoughts and theories but might be that the Mum in the Supermarket offering the terrible choices has long ago given up any fight have always lost and had to put-up with tantrums, etc.

The current western economic model seems to require businesses to make ever increasing profits to make ever increasing payments to shareholders and owners, many of whom cannot spend the money they already have.  In the food industry this additional profit seems to come from more and more processing resulting in less and less healthy foods.  I did read somewhere that when the body is short of nutrients (minerals, vitamins - that sort of thing), it responds with "hunger", encouraging you to go and find food to get the nutrients.  Hunger seems a very broad sensation and whilst people/kids are eating more enough calories the shortage on nutrients means you still feel hunger and want to eat more.  Of course eating more of the highly processed food does not give you much in the way of nutrients - so the problem persists.

Were the food processing companies to start providing nutritious healthy foods then maybe some of the problem would go away.  However, for these businesses, healthy foods seem to mean something related to more packaging, more processing and more profit rather than anything to do with nutrition.

Governments realise this, but like with smoking, the industry has powerful lobby groups (there is a lot on money involved) so they all talk lots about voluntary codes, complain about over-regulation, etc. all to continue to perpetuate the problem and allow their profits to grow.

(Personal opinion).

Ian

[pimpernel]

Well as somone said earlier on ,there is only one reason why anyone is fat. They consume more calories than they burn. I was the fat kid in my class at school and it is no fun. When I got to the age of fifteen I realised that the girls didn't like fat boys and I lost all the weight , a quite deliberate thing. Unfortunately when you are fat if you don't have the incentive to lose weight it is very hard. Because you are fat you have less energy,it is harder to exercise so you tend not to.Your self esteem drops and you eat more comfort food and get fatter still, so you exercise less. Because you are fat people laugh at you when you try to exercise. You are embarrassed to go swimming or use communal changing rooms, you can't keep up with a team game and you get ridiculed even more. I will never laugh at a fat child or find it a cause of entertainment. The parents of fat children are guilty of child abuse just as much as if they were to beat them everyday. Apart from the physical side to being obese there is also the psychological scarring to take in to account.

[Just Katie]

Oh Pimperneal, although I agree that this is a mild form of child abuse I must disagree with you in saying that "The parents of fat children are guilty of child abuse just as much as if they were to beat them everyday". 

I think that many of these parents either spoil their children or are ignorant or are lazy and cannot be bothered to monitor their diets.  Your story really touched me.  I would hope nobody would intimidate an overweight child.  I have trouble with my son.  He has always been very "hungry" from babyhood.  Just before puberty he got quite chubby.  The best I can do is to make him aware of eating healthily but he still struggles.  It seems as though he craves carbs and is always hungry.  Although he has quite a nice physique now, I worry about the high carb and fat intake catching up on him in later life.

Any comments would be appreciated.

[Pads]

Your right pimpernel, as you can see in the behavoiur of these kid on this programme they have no self esteem, but for the parents to then parade them on telly in a programme such as this one makes my blood boil. I personally think these kids should have there parents taken away and go to live with some one who can show them some respect. If instead these kids where put to work for a charity to help people (not on the telly) who were less fortunate than them selfs and made to work hard and keep busy, where they could see the affects of what they were doing, this would give them some pride in what they were doing, this would hopfully break the self esteem link in the chain, and the rest would come around with time. Bordom is one of the main reasons for lying around eating, One of the girls said on this programme that she comes home from school on a friday and goes to bed until monday morning watching telly and her mum comes up and gives her food and snacks !!!!!!!!!!

Incentive is the key word as you said , but thats the same for every thing in life, with out it whats the point of getting up in the morning? The more incentives you have in life the better , so Id better get on with my french home, so I can move out there quicker Hey!      

[pimpernel]

Hi,

        I think it's worth stating that there is a difference between "chubby" and fat. But if a child has a tendency to be chubby then one does have to be careful.. I think that most of the children that tv programmes ridicule have gone past the chubby stage.

        I still disagree with it not being child abuse. If a child is fat the sufferring and taunts they have to endure at the hands of their peers is much worse than a beating.Physical bruises will mend in time but the psychological ones will always be with you. Even when you've lost all the weight and are as skinny as a rake, inside there is still the mind of a fat person and that takes a lot of living with. You don't get your childhood back again. When it's gone it's gone and if it's been miserable you've lost something special. It doesn't just affect your ability to take physical exercise . It also affects your ability to develop socially as you are usually excluded from most peer groups. Fat children as fat adults can have very low self esteem and never develop their true potential because they've learnt through years of conditioning to try not to draw attention to themselves.

         

[raindog]

[quote user="pimpernel"]

Hi,

        I think it's worth stating that there is a difference between "chubby" and fat.

   

[/quote]

How do you define "chubby"?

[Geordie girl]

Pimpernel, i've had to wait awhile before answering your post about overfeeding your children is child abuse the same as beating your children every day, My father was a very violent man and my brothers got beaten to within an inch of their lives at least 2-3 times a week. I could write a book. There was never enough food to go round neither. I'm sure that if my brothers were given the choice between being beaten or eating so much that they put on weight, i'm sure i know which one they'd prefer.Please think twice next time as i'm sure your comments touched a nerve with more people than just me.

[mint]

Geordie, I really do hear what you are saying.  When I was growing up, there was a family near us with 5 children and very little money.  The father, like yours, was very violent, especially after drinking.  The mother was a gambler and lost whatever housekeeping money she had.  The children were perpetually hungry.  My family, especially my mother, would give them what she could spare.  We didn't have much ourselves but, compared to this family, we were millionaires. 

Those children would do anything to fill their stomachs.  Indeed, most of them left to earn their own living as soon as they could.  In fact, the children are now spread in different countries, Sweden, US and perhaps one or two other countries.  Of later years, I have lost touch somewhat.

[pimpernel]

Right, I've thought more than twice in my life about this subject. And I still maintain overfeeding children is child abuse. It is not abuse to the same degree as physical abuse but it is still abuse. I'm sorry if this touches a nerve. My father also had a violent temper and I think one of the reasons I was so fat was my parents feeling guilty and feeding me by way of compensation, to ease their own consciences. My brother and I both left home as soon as we were able (15) and my younger sister had her arm broken during one of my fathers tempers. So please don't lecture me on child abuse. Childhood for me was not a happy time.