Children's obesity a major health concern for Parents - Page 2

Sorry AM - I thught you were in the UK. I have no idea about nutrition as taught in North America, therefore your comments may stand. :)

Feeling a bit prickly - last day of vacation tomorrow. :(

[Reverend Jim]

I've always hated that saying about "it takes a village to raise a child". As far as I can tell it has been interpreted as "Great. Let the village raise my kids". Too many parents have abdicated their roles and let their children be raised by teachers, TV, movies and/or the street. And when the kids turn out bad they blame teachers, TV, movies, video games, etc. It's never their fault.

[BigPaw]

Too many parents have abdicated their roles and let their children be raised by teachers, TV, movies and/or the street. And when the kids turn out bad they blame teachers, TV, movies, video games, etc. It's never their fault.

I've never heard it put so succinctly.

Kids can tell the difference between the teachers that want to teach, and those that don't. This includes parents and schoolteachers.

[Agilemind]

I thught you were in the UK.

Ah, I am currently but I was raised in Canada so I have no clue how the UK school system works.

[Reverend Jim]

Based on old British movies (and one episode of Ripping Yarns), five minutes after birth, all children are shipped off to boarding school where they are tortured mercilessly by their peers until they graduate.

[kidspace]

Beginning of the pc age is typically accountable for overweight kids, all they want to do is sit making the most of on a pc or text messaging. Even their minds are getting fat due to deficiency of use, such as mastering to do mathematical in their go instead of on a finance online car loan calculator. Some day later on man will develop without minds due to shortcomings of use.

[Reverend Jim]

That plus advertising from companies like Coke that say it's not the 3-4 cokes you drink a day that are making you fat (10 tsp of sugar each when the recommended daily max is something like 6) it's that fact that you aren't getting enough exercise. So just keep on swilling down our poison as long as you walk a block a day.

[GrimJack]

Before the PC age it was blamed on the TV age - in fact, the obesity rate in the US is on the way down now. RJ have you seen the movie "IF"? I must assume you have.

After I got out of the service, I gained weight til I was about 240, then Coke came out with their 16 oz bottles sold in 8-packs; they sold for about $1.30 and I was drinking about 103 oz of Coke per day. The next thing I knew I weighed 155 pounds and my clothes were falling off me. I used to say that the Coke ate the food before I did and I pissed it out. Good time, good times. sigh.

[Reverend Jim]

The only move named "If" I saw was the 1968 movie, "If..." starring Malcom MacDowell. Is that the one you mean?

[Agilemind]

Oh good grief that is practically the same as the OP kidspace, I don't feel like repeating myself so read the rest of the comments. In summary the evidence suggests diet is much more important than exercise, lack of exercise as a cause of weight gain is mostly publicized by food companies who don't want you to stop buying their fattening products. And people are getting smarter not dumber thanks to a richer more stimulating environment but that intelligence is changing from memory-based to information-synthesizing.

[jwenting]

it's not one or the other, AM, it's the whole package.
Changing your lifestyle without changing your diet will do little. Changing your diet without changing your lifestyle won't get you the full effect either.
And that's not even taking into account the large group of people for whom there's no option to change one or the other, or for whom changing one or the other will do nothing at all because of other factors involved, like genetic reasons for metabolism problems.

See what happens when you drop the 10km a day hike and the 20km a day bicycle ride without reducing your caloric intake.

[Agilemind]

See what happens when you drop the 10km a day hike and the 20km a day bicycle ride without reducing your caloric intake.

That is unrealistic for the average person (unfortunately few people are able to do that much exercise) but yes that level of exercise will make a huge difference. But 30minutes a day or an hour three times a week (even of intense exercise) burns very little extra calories.

[Stuugie]

@jwenting, I disagree with your last post. When you consider that a person can burn 2000+ calories doing by being "innactive" then one can conceivably lose weight by watching calorie intake alone. However, to be "healthy", one has to do both watch calorie intake and exercise.

[bumsfeld]

Children should be told to be in a sport rather than watch it.
It takes a couch potato to raise a couch spud.

[Stuugie]

Not all sports are affordible to all families though.

[Reverend Jim]

What makes you think that a sport has to be expensive? It's only the organized sports that cost an arm and a leg. There are many opportunities for sporting activities between vegging on the couch and participating in a highly organized sport like soccer or football. My older son, for example, played a lot of ultimate frisbee for next to nothing.