Obese at just 18 months, the little girl raised on a diet of fries

[Demi]

The Mail
London, UK
9 June, 2008


Obese at just 18 months, the little girl raised on a diet of chips (fries)

She's only 18 months old, but Courtney Boswell's diet of chips (fries) - and not much else - means she weighs as much as the average four-year-old.

But despite being warned her daughter's future health is at risk, her mother Angela insists the toddler will grow up just fine.

Miss Boswell, 33, said persuading Courtney to eat healthier foods has proved almost impossible.

She said: 'Most of all she loves chips. I ate a lot of chips in chocolate sauce when I was pregnant with her so maybe it comes from that.

'I think she'll be fine when she's older - I'm not worried at all.

'People say she's getting podgy because her tummy sticks out a bit, but it's just a bit of puppy fat and she will grow out of it.'

Courtney, who weighs 2st 2lbs (30lb), or half a stone (7lb) more than the average 18-month-old, will this week feature in Wednesday's ITV1 documentary, Britain's Biggest Babies*.

The toddler, whose diet also occasionally extends to chocolate, crisps, cereal and Coca-Cola, is shown devouring a portion of chips in just under ten minutes.

But her mother insisted that a lack of vegetables is not for lack of trying.

Courtney's mother Angela said she has tried to get her daughter to eat vegetables but she refuses

'I've tried giving her healthy food but she won't eat it,' Miss Boswell said. 'She will eat a bit of what we're having, say spaghetti bolognese, and she had a massive bowl of mashed potato the other day.

'She might have a banana sometimes, or yoghurt, but she won't touch vegetables - she picks them up and throws them.'

Nutritionist Jeanette Jackson said: 'This really is very bad, this poor child.

'She is only 18 months and already she is chronically obese. The foods she is being given lack vitamins and minerals. Her development will be delayed and, if it continues, there is high risk of her getting a chronic illness.'

Catherine Collins, from the British Dietetic Association, added: 'It can take up to seven attempts to get a child to try something new but there are ways of varying this diet and the family should seek advice from their GP.'

But Miss Boswell - who has four other children, including a five-month-old son, Kai, by partner Gary Quinn, 37 - insisted there was nothing wrong with Courtney's diet.

'We don't have any big people in our family,' she said. 'If there were I'd be more concerned, but the other kids have had similar diets and been fine.

'She's a very healthy baby and it's not often she gets ill. She drinks milk and sometimes Coke between her meals but she is very active. All the children get veg, but I can't force them to eat it.'

Around 13.4 per cent of children under ten are now obese - so overweight that it threatens their health - up from 9.9 per cent in 1995.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1025023/Obese-just-18-months-little-girl-raised-diet-chips.html



Superhuman: Britain's Biggest Babies
ITV 1, Wednesday 9 June, 9pm

One-off documentary probing the rise in UK birthweights and issues faced by overweight mothers. The programme reveals difficulties that can arise from giving birth to a large baby and examines possible links between the size of newborns and Britain's growing obesity problem. Narrated by Sean Pertwee

[rightnow]

You see. Far as she's concerned, if genetically her family doesn't tend to fat, it doesn't matter what they eat.

I consider this a side effect of the authorities acting like being fat gives you disease, vs. that fat is simply a concomitant situation with disease and that disease can exist just fine without it.

[Baerdric]

She can't force her? How can a 18 month child get fries if someone doesn't buy them for her? You can lead a horse to water then wait til it gets thirsty.

This is more about a parent who can't be the adult.

[PS Diva]

They give her fries and colas? I wonder if the 5 month old is getting soft drinks in his bottle...

[Wifezilla]

Can this girl sue her mom once she becomes a diabetic, obese adult with joint, bone and skeletal problems along with heart disease?

[LessLiz]

You can lead a horse to water then wait til it gets thirsty.This should be in your sig file.

Some people shouldn't be parents.

[Legeon]

That woman needs to be slapped.

[jschwab]

I have a mom friend who mentioned to her pediatrician that she thought her toddler needed more fat in her diet and the doctor suggested giving her french fries. It's a sin.

[lowcarbUgh]

If you provide a child with an assortment of healthy foods, they will eat them. A lot of kids won't eat vegetables, but they will eat fruit and there is not a lot of difference nutritionally between the two, except for the higher sugar content of fruit. My son never ate veggies, but ate strawberries, cherries and grapes. He still doesn't eat veggies, but eats a lot fruit as an adult. He weights 165 lbs at 6'1". There is no excuse for junk food, even with a picky eater.

[Nancy LC]

Now if you asked this woman about what she feeds her kid she'd spout the same thing most parents spout about how they're good parents and it is the child being difficult or how they know best what to do for their kid and how dare anyone question them on it.

Default
You see. Far as she's concerned, if genetically her family doesn't tend to fat, it doesn't matter what they eat.

I consider this a side effect of the authorities acting like being fat gives you disease, vs. that fat is simply a concomitant situation with disease and that disease can exist just fine without it.
Infuriating isn't it?

[Baerdric]

This should be in your sig file. I think it might be a Ron Reagan quote...

Some people shouldn't be parents. I really would rather see people be tested, registered and licensed to use gametes but let them drive cars and own firearms unsupervised. Within two generations the remaining people would be smart enough to use cars and guns safely.

[|caitlin|]

This is ridiculous. I'm guessing either the mother is not very intelligent, doesn't care of maybe has some sort of an eating problem herself (it's weird because i often see quite obese little children with extremely skinny women - sort of like when some so called 'friends' or 'family' basically try to shove food down your mouth when you're dieting??? ...

[lowcarbUgh]

The only way to stop the child from eating this junk is for the entire family to stop eating it. The mother sees nothing wrong with it and is going to eat it herself.

[NoWhammies]

It is lazy parenting at its worst. Sad for all of her children. I'm a little shocked at how little the mom seems to care.

[Baerdric]

I worked in a mall at one point, and I would go to lunch at the "Nature's Table" kiosk in the food court every day. And every day there would be skinny moms getting salads and yogurt but giving a $20 to their kids to go get burgers at the McDonalds.

I'm struggling with the belief in a meat based diet and if I come to a conclusion, I don't think I could think to myself that meat based is good for me, but SAD is just fine for my child.

[NoWhammies]

It just seems that any twit with an ounce of common sense would know that fried potatoes and coke were probably not good nutritional choices for a kid. That's not rocket science. I don't even think one would have to pick up a book to figure that one out.

*edit* Oh wait - I just remembered - I once overheard my former husband's new wife say, "We're going to have something healthy for lunch today. Let's go to KFC." I take back my any twit statement.

[Baerdric]

Meow... :lol:

[NoWhammies]

Yup - definitely. :lol:

[KvonM]

I once overheard my former husband's new wife say....
so... is he an ex because he expected you to be an idiot? ;)

i agree with everyone that says it's bad parenting. it's one thing to have foods you like and foods you don't, but you can't let a toddler's tastes dictate your whole life.

[PS Diva]

it's one thing to have foods you like and foods you don't, but you can't let a toddler's tastes dictate your whole life.I agree. It is not as if the child came out of the womb with those tastes. Poor choices (by any standard) were offered to her and she learned to like them.

[Squarecube]

It just seems that any twit with an ounce of common sense would know that fried potatoes and coke were probably not good nutritional choices for a kid. That's not rocket science.

No, it ain't rocket science, but it is a hard sell to get people to see potatoes as anything other than vegetables which they are constantly being told to eat. Ironically, when people do think fries are bad, mostly they will tell you it's because of the extra fat.

[Angeline]

'People say she's getting podgy because her tummy sticks out a bit, but it's just a bit of puppy fat and she will grow out of it.'

Funny that sounds a lot like what was said of my brother. He was a pudgy kid who turned into a fat adolescent and an obese adult. My father kept saying it was just "puppy fat". ( Not that my mother ever fed him a diet of chips)

Well now he has slimmed down considerably but only because his only kidney (he was born that way) had failed and he is on dialysis 3 days a week.

[rightnow]

The issue is that nobody has truly educated the public to understand that

a) Nutrition is IMPORTANT to children, not just a 'would be better if, but no big deal', and

b) McDonald's is NOT HEALTHY just because it has "meat, bread, veggies on the burger, fries are a type of veggie".

I think most people I know who are not bodybuilders or lowcarbers would basically think (b) was accurate, and at least half of them think (a).

Every baby, toddler, and small child I've encountered the last several years (via my kid and her school events, couple daycare stints etc.), have lived on koolaid or dr. pepper in a bottle, sippy cup, etc. and McD as a primary food source. In all seriousness, you can eat cheaper off their dollar menu than most LC cooking would equate to and with none of the trouble. I realize that's not the point, but to many people it is.

The medical agencies telling everybody that sugar is just fine and bread is a health food and the common thought that potatoes and corn are vegetables, combine to add to that.

The first 8 years of my kid's life, I thought that. I knew McD wasn't great, but as I worked way too many hours and was too totally exhausted to even think straight, I figured sticking to subway and arby's most the time made it healthier and ok that we lived on fast or boxed/frozen food nearly all the time. I gained a ton MORE weight. It didn't hit her until she was around 8 and suddenly started gaining. I agreed to let my ex room with us on the condition he'd cook for us, so I could eat LC and she could be fed healthy food. It never happened, he apparently thought the mac&cheese/McD route was fine despite my occasional pleading, and after 18 months she was 50# heavier and I could barely walk.

I threw him out and have worked my ass off to clean up our food and learn to cook and such. But none of this is natural, and it's only starting to seem normal a little bit so far. And it requires I work vastly fewer hours.

Planning ahead, shopping ahead, budgeting, prepping and cleaning in addition to cooking, still seems like an immense pain in the butt, yet I'm starting to relax and handle it better. It really is a radical lifestyle change, particular in terms of available time. I'm getting to where I can make some common foods fairly quickly, but it wasn't quick at first.

[LessLiz]

I threw him out and have worked my ass off to clean up our food and learn to cook and such. But none of this is natural, and it's only starting to seem normal a little bit so far. And it requires I work vastly fewer hours.PJ, the time part will get better as you get more knowledge, as you are already seeing.

I became the cook and grocery shopper for our family at age 16. Long story about the reasons but they had some validity. By 18 I was able to do it on autopilot. Until autopilot kicked it, well, lets just say it was a whole different lifestyle.

[Baerdric]

The issue is that nobody has truly educated the public.Then what the heck have they been doing for the last 40 years?!?!?

Sesame street has dancing vegetables for goodness sake... Every weekend edition of the paper has a "Healthy Eating" article and everyone from Ophra to David Letterman has had on Drs. to tell us not to eat processed foods. I had to do the "Four Basic Food Groups Play in grade school and there are PSAs all over the cable networks about this and that being healthy or not healthy.

I'll tell you what the problem is, we do the above for one hour a day then spend 5 more hours a day letting TV commercials tell us differently. And the TV guys get paid better than the PSA guys.

I haven't watched TV for over a year now and my sanity is slowly returning.

[NoWhammies]

I was actually talking to my 11 year old son this weekend about how it is less expensive these days to live on junk (McDonald's, fast food, potato chips, twinkies) than it is to purchase groceries and cook your family a healthy meal of decent protein, fruits and vegetables, and how a lot of people who are just struggling to get by wind up with life-long issues related to health and weight because they are stuck being able to afford to eat junk rather than healthy foods. Sad as it is, it seems that being able to eat healtfully is a luxury. From a cost perspective, and also from a time perspective.

I'm very lucky in that I get to work from home, so I can carve out time in my day to get a meal pulled together - even if it is just taking 20 minutes to throw something in the crockpot. I can do that. But I can certainly remember back to being a single mom - and working, picking the kiddo up from school (I was always lucky enough to tailor my schdule to his schdule), getting home and having to figure out a meal. I'd cook most nights, but there would probably be one night a week where I was just too wiped out to do it, and off we'd go to McDonalds or some other place like that. And that was with my background and knowledge of nutrition (of course back then it was the food pyramid nutrition) from doing personal training and counseling people for nutrition and weight loss - I knew how to eat right, I wanted my kiddo to eat right and most days I would do my best to afford to put healthy, home cooked food on the table - but there were days...

I am fortunate that I've always done fairly well financially (at least since I've been a mother) and was able to afford to feed my son healthy foods - but I remember when I was young and poor - sometimes what I put into my own mouth was dictated by what I could afford. I used to live on a bag of lentils for an entire week. 55 cents a bag. I also know that even though we do fine financially, I am feeling how expensive everything is right now - so, if we are feeling pinched, affording healthy foods must be a very difficult thing to do for many others.

[rightnow]

I don't recall it ever being a big deal or taught me.

In 7th grade I took a cooking class. We got canned biscuit dough, tore holes in it, dropped it in the deep fryer, and made donuts we shook up in bags with cinnamon and brown sugar. Most the rest of the class was about the same. It was basically how to take totally processed food and make it. So we learned to cook pasta and pour a jar of spaghetti sauce into it.

In 9th grade I took a cooking class. We learned to get weevils out of flour, we learned to bake cookies and cake, and our last project was planning a meal for many that turned out to involve hot dogs and how many packages of buns vs. packages of hot dogs which had different package quantities and so on... it was more like a word math question project than anything seriously related to real food.

Kids learn by example, too. In high school the primary food was unrecognizeable glop on a tray (canned everything, ugh), much better-recognizeable french fries, mac&cheese, pizza or other dishes that were occasional, and of course the gigantic soft cookies we had at every break, and 3 fast food places across the street the kids with any money would walk over to. I think my senior year they got a salad bar, but by then I was working full time on top of school since I lived away from home from age 15, and was busy doing things that weren't eating on my lunch hour, like making out with my boyfriend who visited from the school across town. (Probably a failing I still have -- I'll take sex over food anyday. ;-))

And of course, an entire life filled with marketing.

Unfortunately the useful recommendations I'm sure existed, either didn't go by me, or made no impression.

I do remember sesame street in 1969 or so. A few episodes were hypnotized into my brain. I remember learning to count with the TV while mom "put on her face" and cleaned the house. I don't remember anything about food on there though, except of course the cookie monster. :-)

[NoWhammies]

What's a weevil?

[ReginaW]

What's a weevil?

Little bugs in flour and flour-based foods

[NoWhammies]

I've never heard of them before - are they not in Washington or am I just sheltered?

[rightnow]

I'd never seen them before my cooking class and I nearly vomited. The culture I came from (I mean my family) had no money but that was because we spent every dime on a decent house. I couldn't imagine anybody screening out bugs and eating the flour. Everybody called me a whiner when I complained that was revolting. Apparently they weren't that uncommon except in my world.

[lowcarbUgh]

If you compare the bugs to junk food, I think they are the lesser of two weevils. :lol:

[Wifezilla]

::ggrroooaaannnnn::::

[GypsyClare]

I'm a little sad to hear how harsh everyone is on this mom.

Maybe if the nutritional information that was out there for the general public was more accurate, she'd be more concerned about what her child is eating?

I find the idea of giving the government the power to license child-bearing absolutely appalling! This is the same government who put out the food pyramid, right?

That said, I agree that this mother is rationalizing her actions when she says she has no control over what her child eats. But what I feel towards her is more sympathy for being singled out because of one child who is overweight, as if raising a fat child is some kind of sin. There are lots of reasons a child might be heavy, and if every kid who got onto a food obsession was the victim of abuse because their parents didn't decide to make a major power struggle out of it, very few toddlers would live with their own parents.

Yes, she could change the whole family's diet to something more nutritious, and if the nutritional advice out there in the mainstream were more accurate, maybe she would be more willing to listen to the advice of "experts" on what her children should eat and what they shouldn't.

The reality is, the "experts" probably want her to switch from serving her child chips to serving sweetened lowfat yogurt, skim milk and fruit rollups. She has five children, and I'm not sure it's a bad idea not to make a big deal out of a temporary food obsession. I'm honestly not even sure I'd believe she's been quoted accurately, based on personal experience with reporters.

I would rather support a mother's right to raise her children based on her own values, and try to make changes by improving the factual information that's available to her.

Ok, sorry. I have a pathological need to defend whoever is absent. :blush:

[Baerdric]

I don't recall it ever being a big deal or taught me.Well, I think I'm a like a decade older than you, so school might have been different. I remember 7th grade Health class they talked about not eating starches and sugar unless you wanted to get fat.

I might have a little bit of a stilted memory in general, because I was always consious of "healthy" eating, and of course there was the whole vegetarian thing with working in the healthfood co-op and working in the food industry at many levels.

My son watched a lot of Sesame Street about 10 years ago, and I watched it with him, since I couldn't move out of the room without help and much screaming in pain. Every show had something about eating right, even though that meant eating high carb, it was always about whole foods.

The point is that the information was there, even though it was flawed. Our taxes paid for it and much like the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, it accomplished nothing - probably less than nothing.

[lowcarbUgh]

I've been waiting years to work in that line from Master and Commander. :D

[Squarecube]

I don't recall it ever being a big deal or taught me.

In 7th grade I took a cooking class. We got canned biscuit dough, tore holes in it, dropped it in the deep fryer, and made donuts we shook up in bags with cinnamon and brown sugar. Most the rest of the class was about the same. It was basically how to take totally processed food and make it. So we learned to cook pasta and pour a jar of spaghetti sauce into it.\

I'm laughing and angry at the same time -- like a Tennessee Williams play I guess. What's so obnoxious about your story is it ain't very hard to make doughnuts the real way. The whole reason they probably exist in the first place is because you don't really need much equipment to make fried flour. I used to make them as a boy scout over a camp fire -- oh jeepers, I'm being flooded with memories.

Hey, there is one food that comes in a can I remember from those days!!! DAK Canned danish bacon -- it's a good thing to camp with. No refrigeration needed.

[Baerdric]

I find the idea of giving the government the power to license child-bearing absolutely appalling! They already do it, but they wait until the damage is done, then they take the damaged children away from the incompetent parents, damaging them even further.

But my comment was more rhetorical than intended to suggest a course of action. I personally don't think the Government has the right to license anything other than interstate trade.

Ok, sorry. I have a pathological need to defend whoever is absent. :blush:Nothing wrong with that, and I would support the mother, while not supporting her poor choices.

[Squarecube]

I don't recall it ever being a big deal or taught me.

In 7th grade I took a cooking class. We got canned biscuit dough, tore holes in it, dropped it in the deep fryer, and made donuts we shook up in bags with cinnamon and brown sugar. Most the rest of the class was about the same. It was basically how to take totally processed food and make it. So we learned to cook pasta and pour a jar of spaghetti sauce into it.\

I'm laughing and angry at the same time -- like a Tennessee Williams play I guess. What's so obnoxious about your story is it ain't very hard to make doughnuts the real way. The whole reason they probably exist in the first place is because you don't really need much equipment to make fried flour. I used to make them as a boy scout over a camp fire -- oh jeepers, I'm being flooded with memories.

Hey, there is one food that comes in a can I remember from those days!!! DAK Canned danish bacon -- it's a good thing to camp with. No refrigeration needed.

[LessLiz]

The reality is, the "experts" probably want her to switch from serving her child chips to serving sweetened lowfat yogurt, skim milk and fruit rollups.And I have sympathy for her if that is what she is feeding the kid. Or if, like my parents, even limiting carbs they were raising a fat kid -- me, she was trying different options. But unless *everything* she said was completely misreported (granted, I know how that can happen!) then I'm having a hard time having any sympathy for her. I've got a lot of sympathy for the mother who feeds her children ramen noodles because it is the only thing she can afford.

I really do not understand how anyone could possibly believe that a diet of french fries is sufficient for a child. Unless, of course, this woman is mentally challenged in which case the reporter should be shot.

[PS Diva]

I'm a little sad to hear how harsh everyone is on this mom.

Maybe if the nutritional information that was out there for the general public was more accurate, she'd be more concerned about what her child is eating?

I would rather support a mother's right to raise her children based on her own values, and try to make changes by improving the factual information that's available to her.
I agree with you that government intervention isn't called for, mainly because we can't all agree what a healthy diet is. However, I know of no group that thinks a good diet calls for cola for babies. Kids eat so little volume-wise that everything really needs to be nutritionally dense. I personally don't fault her for yogurt or potatoes or the bananas she mentions. What I find objectionable is that she allows the child to make the choices that the adult should be making.

[lowcarbUgh]

Back to the original topic, how could anyone in England not know that junk food is bad for you. All the UK papers write about it and you've got Dr. Gillian sticking her nose in everyone's poo.

[LessLiz]

That is my question. Short of mental deficiency, I'm not buying it.

[rightnow]

Back to the original topic, how could anyone in England not know that junk food is bad for you.
McDonald's is "100% beef".
Bread is a serving of grain. Gotta get plenty of those in a day.
Lettuce and tomato and fries are all 'vegetables'.
Far as I can see (modern people/media/government), the only thing actually bad about McDonald's is the fat in the meat and cheese.
Fortunately fries are cooked in veggie oil and not nasty animal lard anymore.
So why isn't McDonald's healthy?

I mean as far as what you could get across to the average person as uneducated about food as I was, which apparently is a good chunk of the population.

[rightnow]

Oh, but on the original post topic -- feeding a toddler fries constantly is just retarded.

Unfortunately when a generation has very little parenting, they don't learn much about doing it.

[lowcarbUgh]

I don't see how anyone who has been paying attention to American culture in the past 30 years could not know - starting with Jane Brody's columns in the NY Times in the 1970s and recently Supersize Me. How could anyone not know that drinking a ginormous sugared drink is going to make you fat?

The government is not recommending this crap. They want you to eat steel cut oats and lentils.

[NoWhammies]

I can see someone seeing fries as being a vegetable. But coke? I'm pretty sure there has never been literature praising the nutritional merits of coke (has there? Now I'm gonna have to google). Heck, even on the HFCS website, the best they can come up with are studies showing that HFCS isn't that bad.

[rightnow]

I don't see how anyone who has been paying attention to American culture in the past 30 years could not know - starting with Jane Brody's columns in the NY Times in the 1970s and recently Supersize Me. How could anyone not know that drinking a ginormous sugared drink is going to make you fat?

The government is not recommending this crap. They want you to eat steel cut oats and lentils.
I agree.

Unfortunately I don't read the NY Times. Or any other paper. My only exposure to media in the past was TV shows and morning kid shows, and the commercials in between.

Even if I got the NY times, I'd have had no interest in reading nutrition columns.

But I agree that everyone should know a big soda is not great for you. However, that comes in two divisions:

a) If you're not fat, guess it's ok to be drinking them, and
b) If you are fat, and you stop drinking them, and you don't get un-fat, then it doesn't really matter.

I know this logic is hilarious, but I was there, and I'm trying to demonstrate that this assumption that people actually even KNOW what the government recommends besides "grains and fruits and veggies and avoid fats" is a big assumption. Just because information exists somewhere doesn't mean people are exposed to it. And sometimes, someone can be exposed to something, but a brief exposure to idea C is not going to mean much if marketing exposure (including entertaining pseudo-news, which is all news of today for the most part) to idea A is 5000x more prevalent.

[NoWhammies]

Huh - well...

Coca-Cola, looking to stem the tide of health concerns about its flagship brew, has enlisted the service of a one, Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait, to conduct trials to see if Coke can increase iron absorption from pizza.

Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait, who is leading this ground-breaking and much needed research, says “It is driven by public health needs. There is a global program to eradicate iron deficiency anaemia, and the reason we are doing this is that we need to find easy ways to help people absorb more iron. Drinking the right sorts of drinks with your meal is one way of doing that. If you have a fruit or acid drink with your meal we know you get more iron that if you have a cup of tea.

“A lot of young people have become iron deficient and we need to find ways of helping children who eat junk food and not much meat and don’t get much iron. If we can find something people like drinking as opposed to creating some new functional health food that they are not going to bother with, then we feel it is adding to nutrition.

Now I personally don't see that as a health benefit...but....

And also, you can use it to clean a toilet. Clean toilets are healthy.

[rightnow]

Gets corrosion off your car's battery cable connections pretty well too.

[fujiwara]

Softens the pesky enamel right off your teeth, too.

[rightnow]

Actually, thinking about it --

A) Not sure if I made myself clear earlier, I just wanted to say that it's a really, really culturally inured thing to think "how could people not know X = Y when it's been in the NY Times?" -- a huge portion of people I've known over my life can't afford bus fare, and most the rest of them only know what's advertised either during the X-Files, MASH (my two faves when I watched TV) or during COPS and The Family Guy. People with the level of economy and education to care what the NY Times says are the ones that probably "need" a lot less 'formal edu' about what food = "real food".

2) It occurs to me the one thing that *did* educated me quite well -- though never about food -- was "schoolhouse rock" on cartoon mornings as a kid. To this day I can sing "I'm just a bill" and "conjunction junction" perfectly, LOL. Putting food info a cool tune and cartoon as an ad would probably work pretty well.

Except you know the first two priorities we'd see were:
1) get plenty of grains in your day, then
2) avoid fat especially meat-related fat, and then
3) eat fruits & veggies, but half their examples would probably be grapes and corn [not even a veggie].

So it might be more harm than help.

[anyway...]

As to the original topic, the mother is crazy. I know children can be picky and whatnot, but she is the one putting the fries in front of her child is she not? It also occurs to me that she said she is having trouble getting the child to eat vegetables, and the child will eat fries, mashed potatoes and pasta... but yet, no mention of meat? Even if she couldn't get the kid to eat veggies, surely some chicken or beef would be better for her than a big 'ol bowl of mashed taters. Sheesh.


I was actually talking to my 11 year old son this weekend about how it is less expensive these days to live on junk (McDonald's, fast food, potato chips, twinkies) than it is to purchase groceries and cook your family a healthy meal of decent protein, fruits and vegetables, and how a lot of people who are just struggling to get by wind up with life-long issues related to health and weight because they are stuck being able to afford to eat junk rather than healthy foods. Sad as it is, it seems that being able to eat healtfully is a luxury. From a cost perspective, and also from a time perspective.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I've done well for myself in the past years, but lately I've hit a bit of a rough patch... for many reasons, which are irrelevant, but it's a bit of a new world for me. It's become really hard. I'm here because I know which foods work well for my body and I know how to provide myself with the correct nutrients, but it's amazing how that all goes out the window when you can't afford the correct food. When it comes right down to it, unless things start changing soon, I may be staring down a box of $0.33 generic mac and cheese because I really won't have any other options.

I'm not saying this as a "pity me" kind of thing (please dont - I'll land on my feet. I always do :D ). I'm just agreeing that it's truly sad that eating healthy really is turning out to be a luxury. And in a day where so many diseases plague us you would think we would do something about this. But no, instead we have the gov't paying farmers not to grow crops on their land and prices on real food skyrocketing out of control. Fantastic.

I know this isn't the situation for the mother in this article, but I am sure this is the situation for many people out there. I, for one, would love to stick with my diet and eat well, but being that I haven't won the lottery lately....

We shall see.

[Legeon]

As to the original topic, the mother is crazy. I know children can be picky and whatnot, but she is the one putting the fries in front of her child is she not?That's basically what it boils down to. She's been educated, she's been shown what's wrong, she's leaving the whole thing up to the baby because she herself is just so helpless, you know? What a selfish, manipulative woman.

[Squarecube]

[QUOTE=anyway..., I may be staring down a box of $0.33 generic mac and cheese because I really won't have any other options.[/QUOTE]

Look around for some canned mackerel, yeah, it's got skin and bones- it mixes well with something like cottage cheese. It's an omega 3 wild fish.

here's some mrecipes from a "thrifty" web site.

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf13697307.tip.html

[lowcarbUgh]

A) Not sure if I made myself clear earlier, I just wanted to say that it's a really, really culturally inured thing to think "how could people not know X = Y when it's been in the NY Times?"

I think you misunderstood my point: there has been a strong anti-junk food movement in this country beginning in the 1970s with Jane Brody of the NY Times, who was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and flourished during the 1980s with magazines such as Prevention and recently, Supersize Me. All this information found its way into news programming, women's magazines, morning TV shows, etc. The message that junk food is bad has been in the forefront for a long, long time.

[Angeline]

I'm not saying this as a "pity me" kind of thing (please dont - I'll land on my feet. I always do :D ). I'm just agreeing that it's truly sad that eating healthy really is turning out to be a luxury. And in a day where so many diseases plague us you would think we would do something about this. But no, instead we have the gov't paying farmers not to grow crops on their land and prices on real food skyrocketing out of control. Fantastic.

I know this isn't the situation for the mother in this article, but I am sure this is the situation for many people out there. I, for one, would love to stick with my diet and eat well, but being that I haven't won the lottery lately....

We shall see.

When you think about it, throughout much of humanity's modern history eating has been a big issue period. Except that the issue was not getting enough to eat. Now the issue has changed slightly but is still essentially the same. People might not be starving for calories, but they are starving for lack of proper nutrition. The effects are slower and way more insidious.

[PS Diva]

I think you misunderstood my point: there has been a strong anti-junk food movement in this country beginning in the 1970s with Jane Brody of the NY Times, who was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and flourished during the 1980s with magazines such as Prevention and recently, Supersize Me. All this information found its way into news programming, women's magazines, morning TV shows, etc. The message that junk food is bad has been in the forefront for a long, long time.Just as a reminder... this story comes from the UK.

[LessLiz]

Yes, the UK where nutritional dogma and the obesity "crisis" is pushed even more strongly than in the US.

[jschwab]

I think you misunderstood my point: there has been a strong anti-junk food movement in this country beginning in the 1970s with Jane Brody of the NY Times, who was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and flourished during the 1980s with magazines such as Prevention and recently, Supersize Me. All this information found its way into news programming, women's magazines, morning TV shows, etc. The message that junk food is bad has been in the forefront for a long, long time.

I think the problem is that it's all talk - none of it makes it into public policy decisions. McDonald's can build wherever they want and the ingredients in all of this junk are actually subsidized by the government, making it cheap. If you have ever seen what they serve as school lunches and the candy-pushing that goes on there, it's obvious that the wider society does not take the warnings seriously. It's changing, but VERY slowly. The alternative for the health writers is a crappy vegetarian soy burger diet anyway that most people would be just as sick on. My mom, who is an intelligent, well-educated woman feeds my kids sugar cereal and then hints they are not getting enough nutrition because they don't have milk. There is a huge disconnect for a vast majority of people - if there wasn't, Dunkin Donuts would not be on every street corner. The only time it is ever deemed a societal problem is when it causes somebody to be fat and this mother is basically saying "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" because the rest of the family eats this junk and remains thin.

Janine

[Wifezilla]

Well, you also have to keep in mind that most people would consider a candy bar "bad for you" while ignoring that a bagel has the same amount of carbs. How many people gave up Snickers and donuts only to eat bran muffins and bagels with fat-free cream cheese not realizing there was little or no difference. A carb is a carb is a carb.

[anita45]

Well, you also have to keep in mind that most people would consider a candy bar "bad for you" while ignoring that a bagel has the same amount of carbs. How many people gave up Snickers and donuts only to eat bran muffins and bagels with fat-free cream cheese not realizing there was little or no difference. A carb is a carb is a carb.


And that's the problem - so many people just don't realise that there's little difference between a candy bar and a bagel. I think generally people just don't have any understanding of what they're eating... not that that's an excuse!

[lowcarbUgh]

We're talking about kids here. My kids never wanted more than one bagel or oat bran muffin. So, to a kid's taste buds, there seems to be a big difference in potato chips and dried apple chips.

[ReginaW]

I seriously wonder how much of the article is sensationalism versus how much is really how this kid eats each day?

[NoWhammies]

Sensational journalism? Say it ain't so....

[faduckeggs]

But a 30 pound 18 month old is not "obese."

Two of my three kids weighed 30 pounds by their first birthdays, and all they ate was breastmilk with a bit of homemade "babyfood" (mostly boiled and ground meat and veggies).

[LessLiz]

I wonder about the sensationalism angle, too, which goes back several pages in this thread when several of us wondered about whether the reporter accurately represented the woman.

Getting downright honest about it, I don't think anyone believes candy bars and french fries are healthy. Yeah, they might think bagels and low fat yogurt is healthy. I see a lot of people who just don't give a damn one way or the other. If it's ignorance then its willful ignorance -- there are news shows on the same channel that carries Family Guy.

This, though, ignores the impact of poverty. I look at Indian Fry Bread, eaten by the tribes in my area, which is likely the #1 killer of tribal people here, despite what the government says. It is a creative use of commodity foods, delicious and addictive. Or ramen noodles eaten by people trying to stretch inadequate resources. For many people who live inside communities where this is the norm, the idea of nutrition is lost because they see no opportunities for different food. What is the point of listening to news stories about food that is completely out of your reach? And honestly, who would choose to eat an expensive bagel that doesn't taste half as good as much cheaper Indian Fry Bread or hot ramen noodles?

[jes_s]

[QUOTE=faduckeggs]But a 30 pound 18 month old is not "obese."

I'm glad you pointed that out. My son is a strapping 18 month old and he is around 30 pounds, but I wouldn't consider him obese. He prefers to eat whatever I'm eating so he consumes lots of meat, eggs and some veggies and berries.
I am guilty of feeding my kids things I wouldn't eat like white bread, pasta, milk and mashed potatoes, but I guess I rationalize it because I am the one with the carb problem, not them. If I'm not careful they will be in the same boat as me.

[ReginaW]

I'm looking at the girl's picture and I just don't see "OBESE"....I see what appears to be a fairly normal pinchy-pudgy cheeked toddler, but not insanely obese, so fat she's on the verge of major health issues or death.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/08/article-1025023-0184E2A100000578-258_468x479.jpg

While I definitely don't agree with mom feeding her french fries and coke, I do think this isn't the kid to make a fuss over....she's a baby for goodness sakes! irks me television shows find this sort of 'entertainment' appropriate!

[lowcarbUgh]

Her mom looks overweight to me. What I took away from the story is that the little girl eats crisps and not much else. That's the bad thing: no nutrition.

[Wifezilla]

My kids never wanted more than one bagel or oat bran muffin

I could, and often would, eat the whole bag. I was skinny as a kid, but carbs were addictive to me even then.

[Tallica]

That is disgusting and I question this woman parenting skills that poor little girl...I have a feeling this won't be the only problem this woman is going to have. Who is the parent and who is the child here....she won't starve herself so if she only offers healthy foods she'll eat it. You know I am overweight and my mother is overweight and her mother and so on...I have tried to teach my children what I know and I don't let them eat whatever they want as I was able to do as a child and hopefully they won't have to go through what I have. Not that I blame my mother but I think that if I was taught a different way of eating I might not have so much trouble now.

[lowcarbUgh]

I could, and often would, eat the whole bag. I was skinny as a kid, but carbs were addictive to me even then.

I suppose that would be something to watch for in kids. The little girl in the story seems to be a carb addict already. But most people don't know about carb addiction. It never crossed my mind when my kids were growing up.

[ReginaW]

I could, and often would, eat the whole bag. I was skinny as a kid, but carbs were addictive to me even then.

While the media likes to pick on the kids who are heavy, no one seems to blink when the thin kids are eating utter crap and that, IMO is the problem....if your kid doesn't gain weight eating junk, no harm no foul....but watch out the minute the child registers at or above the 85th percentile for BMI-for-age!

[lowcarbUgh]

While the media likes to pick on the kids who are heavy, no one seems to blink when the thin kids are eating utter crap and that, IMO is the problem....if your kid doesn't gain weight eating junk, no harm no foul....but watch out the minute the child registers at or above the 85th percentile for BMI-for-age!

There's a huge correlation between obesity and type 2 diabetes - somethng like 90%. I think national governments are worried that their health care systems are going to implode if they don't stem the trend of obesity.

[ReginaW]

There's a huge correlation between obesity and type 2 diabetes - somethng like 90%. I think national governments are worried that their health care systems are going to implode if they don't stem the trend of obesity.

1 in 5 with type II diabetes are normal weight (20%)....as we all know, correlation isn't causation - IMO the obesity isn't driving the diabetes, it's the insulin resistance, in those thin, normal, overweight or obese, that's driving the diabetes with and without weight gain, which is being driven by excess carbohydrate with inadequate complete protein and micronutrient deficiencies.

[KvonM]

I think you misunderstood my point: there has been a strong anti-junk food movement in this country beginning in the 1970s with Jane Brody of the NY Times, who was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and flourished during the 1980s with magazines such as Prevention and recently, Supersize Me. All this information found its way into news programming, women's magazines, morning TV shows, etc. The message that junk food is bad has been in the forefront for a long, long time.
never ever ever underestimate the power and pervasiveness of stupidity across the human race.

seriously... look at what those studies are up against. in part they're competing against themselves because of the food pyramid's "grains are good but sugar is bad" dogma (regardless of the fact that grains become sugar in the body). on the other side, they're competing against mass media marketing that does nothing but push junk food in our faces, and if it's not junk food, it's pharmaceuticals to counteract the effects of junk food. what are you more likely to remember? the 30 second commercials about alli, cheerios lowering your cholesterol, and mcdonalds, or the article on page 37 of the new york times?

to quote MIB, "a person is smart. people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."

let's not also forget that the nutritional experts on the talk shows tend to push the low-fat mantra... the idiot on rachel ray's talk show comes to mind, even though i've blocked out his name.

i remember the little cartoons stuck into the commercials on saturday mornings... they pushed real food rather than junk. but back then, parents did the parenting and kids obeyed (gee... what a novel concept).

[lowcarbUgh]

1 in 5 with type II diabetes are normal weight (20%)....as we all know, correlation isn't causation - IMO the obesity isn't driving the diabetes, it's the insulin resistance, in those thin, normal, overweight or obese, that's driving the diabetes with and without weight gain, which is being driven by excess carbohydrate with inadequate complete protein and micronutrient deficiencies.

The real reasons make no difference as the various governments are going to go after obesity just like they did smoking. That's the trend I'm seeing. You're going to see more and more of these kind of stories.

[PearlWhite]

What I took away from the story is that the little girl eats crisps and not much else. That's the bad thing: no nutrition.Just to clarify it's french fries (chips) not potato chips (crisps).

Still; no nutrition.


Hwoever feeds a baby Coke & fries & takes no for an answer re. veggies etc. is a bad, irresponsabel parent. Fat or skinny baby, doesn't matter. Who's the boss? YOU are the boss!

[lowcarbUgh]

Regina just posted a story that the Wall Street Journal ran about obese children in the US. It seems we now have programs and even counseling sessions for the parents.

[LessLiz]

1 in 5 with type II diabetes are normal weight (20%)....as we all know, correlation isn't causation - IMO the obesity isn't driving the diabetes, it's the insulin resistance, in those thin, normal, overweight or obese, that's driving the diabetes with and without weight gain, which is being driven by excess carbohydrate with inadequate complete protein and micronutrient deficiencies.Exactly, which ishows what is wrong with the focus of the whole "obesity crisis" and crusade. Plus, I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot more thin people with Type II than is currently known -- it is overweight and obese who are routinely tested, not normal weight people.

[rightnow]

The only time it is ever deemed a societal problem is when it causes somebody to be fat and this mother is basically saying "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" because the rest of the family eats this junk and remains thin.
This is it. If plenty of people living on McDonald's and bagels are thin, then nobody has reason to suspect that McDonalds and bagels make you fat.

I think another problem is that often, after a person has started gaining weight, they may realize it and attempt to diet -- 'by the book'. When they discover that eating popcorn, wheat bran, pasta, typical yogurt, fruits, etc. does not make them thin--or even if it does a little, makes them so miserable it's simply untenable to live on--then what's the point.

And when people are in a culture where nearly all the parents and schools are visibly feeding children utter crap, and some of them are not made fat by it, then it seems like the only people in the wrong are the parents of kids who start getting fat. Despite the fact that the entire culture of a neighborhood may be, in general, eating about the same way, only the ones with the genetics leaning toward fat (which may in part depend on the mother's health during pregnancy and what HER parents fed her) are the ones under suspicion.

The fact that this instantly creates a racial bias--Native Americans are vastly more likely to be obese here than Chinese for example--for some reason none of the leaders of those groups seems to be looking at.

It also creates some degree of economic bias--I'm eating lowcarb and it's a helluva lot more expensive for me, with my store options and a car, than it used to be, and than eating highcarb would be, and that's with food education and kitchen options far more extensive than the average person around me that I know has.

And lastly, I just want to point out, that "knowing soda is bad for you" is not a black and white thing. This is not like "food is wholesome" or "you'll burn in hell for giving it to your child." Most everybody knows that candy bars are not good for you. But it's a matter of degree. HOW bad they are; what 'quantity' would seem to constitute bad-enough-to-matter; how much DIFFERENCE it actually makes; these are the things that change how people evaluate even the food for their kids.

Knowing that "whole foods are better than junk foods" doesn't mean a helluva lot if it just doesn't seem to really matter much one way or the other. It's also better to make your bed in the morning and stand up straight but if we don't do it, does the world end?

Well, it's better to feed your kid broccoli than McDonalds but if everyone around you is eating McDonalds, and Subway is supposedly a healthy alternative, and McD has '100% beef' and they cook fries in veggie oil, and your kid isn't mega-obese (and/or cutting out McD did not cure their obesity, so didn't seem to matter in the end), then I think most people just think so what.

There are people who think, "ice cream is not healthy and my child will never, ever touch it and parents who feed their children ice cream regularly should be punished for child neglect or abuse." And there are parents at every degree of that whole spectrum. The important thing is that there IS a spectrum, and what changes is not how bad ice cream is for you, what changes is *how seriously the parents take it* and *how 'bad' is 'bad'* and so on.

[Baerdric]

And there is also a factor of wanting to be part of your culture no matter how bad it might be for you. I took my son down one day to let him buy and eat a twinkie. There was a joke about twinkies, so he needed to know what a twinkie was.

I don't want him to be too far removed from our culture, including the not so smart parts of it. I can see other knowledgable parents thinking the same way. French fries are part of the US culture, like it or not. You don't want to over-indulge, but everyone should try some.

[lowcarbUgh]

And there is also a factor of wanting to be part of your culture no matter how bad it might be for you. I took my son down one day to let him buy and eat a twinkie. There was a joke about twinkies, so he needed to know what a twinkie was.

That's very true. I ran into just that when talking about LC diets to Type 2 diabetics. They want to eat like their friends and family.

One odd thing I noticed about fast food and its appeal to certain groups are the descendants of the Mayan in Cozumel, Mexico. There is one Mickey Ds on the island and it is always crammed with Maya and I've never understood it because the local food is very good. You won't find a Norteamericano in there or even a Mexico City transplant of mainly Spanish descent. There is something about fast food that is very addictive to certain ethnic groups.

[MyJourney]

When I was a teenager I was babysitting these 2 girls. Both their parents were physicians, the mother was a pediatrician and the father an ob/gyn. They would actually give these kids coke and diet coke in their bottles.

The first time I saw that I was totally horrified. I thought they were kidding when they were telling me to only give them the diet coke in their bottle before bed because they didnt want the sugar to rot their teeth when they slept.

So even parents who do, or at least should, know better still make really stupid decisions. Maybe there is some type of disconnect when it comes to your own child?

I remember I once asked a friend of mine who was constantly talking about how her kids are overweight and get picked on in school and how she is trying to get them to eat healthier foods and yet she would go out and get them McDonalds or candy bars and other types of junk food.

She told me she feels bad saying no. That she isnt in a financial situation to buy the kids new toys all the time etc. but this is something small that makes them happy that she can give them and making them happy at that moment gives her pleasure even though it is worse for everyone in the long run.

[PearlWhite]

Wow! That is awful.
Doctors giving their toddlers soda!
And I don't care that it's "diet", they're toddlers, for crying out loud.

[bsheets]

Yes, the UK where nutritional dogma and the obesity "crisis" is pushed even more strongly than in the US.
Is it really??? I wonder why that would be....

[rightnow]

Because they have socialized healthcare.

[rightnow]

That's very true. I ran into just that when talking about LC diets to Type 2 diabetics. They want to eat like their friends and family.
Having been around a whole lot of T2D in step-family, one issue I notice is that unlike 'diet plans' where people actually make lowcarb versions of foods, nobody ever did jack for the diabetics.

I think if the ADA wasn't pushing grains as good and sugar as just-fine this might be different. Teaching diabetics to make some yummy lowcarb foods they could have instead of either crap vs. nothing, could really change something for them.

But at family/holiday gatherings, all I saw was tons of crap. The diabetics were expected to either eat none of it, or make an exception because it was a special day.

Then when I point out to my stepmother that the ADA diet has led to worsening illness and amputations, blindness, heart failure and more in her family, she retorts that it's really everybody's own fault because they don't follow it perfectly. My theory is that any eating plan that can't be followed, because its food makes you crave more stuff you shouldn't have, and because its refusal to avoid sugar makes it a choice between suffering without or seriously hurting yourself, sucks.

One odd thing I noticed about fast food and its appeal to certain groups are the descendants of the Mayan in Cozumel, Mexico. There is one Mickey Ds on the island and it is always crammed with Maya and I've never understood it because the local food is very good. You won't find a Norteamericano in there or even a Mexico City transplant of mainly Spanish descent. There is something about fast food that is very addictive to certain ethnic groups.
Sure. Genetics lab PhDs admit freely that the 'obesity epidemic' is actually greatly weighted toward certain ethnic groups. There's separately evidence that natives addict rapidly to alcohol (read about this years ago, but don't remember the ref, but it was kind of a testament to why the white influx that came with alcohol was so devastating), and that some genetic lines have a much stronger attraction to the taste of sweet than others. The intolerance and addiction factors in food do seem to be genetically influenced, and the tendency to obesity does as well.

Which makes the growing focus on obesity *rather than healthy eating* really concerning. By focusing everything on the symptom, in the end we just make fat the nazi focus and completely ignore the addictive killing foods the corporations indirectly pay the medical agencies to recommend, or at least avoid discouraging. It's like a medical sleight-of-hand.

[KvonM]

Then when I point out to my stepmother that the ADA diet has led to worsening illness and amputations, blindness, heart failure and more in her family, she retorts that it's really everybody's own fault because they don't follow it perfectly.
i've heard you say this before, and honestly i'm torn between wanting to cry and wanting to smack your stepmother upside the head with the squeeky hammer of doom™ wrapped in anthrax-coated razor wire. a solution that doesn't work isn't a solution, it's a problem. and just because a given solution has been handed down from those in authority doesn't make it automatically valid. germany tried that in the 1930's... look what happened.

By focusing everything on the symptom.... It's like a medical sleight-of-hand.
this is indicative of our entire health system. it's not just obesity, it's everything.

for the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. our health system has gotten so busy chasing down which battle was lost and throwing more troops at it, that they completely ignore the single nail that would have gotten the right message to the right battle at the right point in the war. i'm not trying to say that all health problems are a simple one shot/one fix explanation... i've watched enough "house" to know better. but thanks to greedy pharmaceutical companies who came up with the ingenious idea of marketing to lay-people instead of just the doctors, people are even MORE inclined to throw band-aids at the problem instead of really fixing the root cause.

[verimius]

Our two brats, now 13 and 16, grew and thrived on a steady diet of canned garbanzo beans, apple sauce, and cottage cheese.

This was before I knew about low-carb of course.

[LukeA]

Our two brats, now 13 and 16, grew and thrived on a steady diet of canned garbanzo beans, apple sauce, and cottage cheese.

.


I am glad neither of them died from the lack of many major nutrients eating such a limited menu growing up...