Article in Sun on childhood obesity

[seadragon]

Following an article on the guys who wrote "Fixing Dad" I came across this on the sun website. It's an article on childhood obesity and talks about portion sizes. It then shows pictures and description of meals for kids. The meals are terrible. Overloaded with carbs and encouraging people to think of sweetcorn as a vegetable. The main meal was sweetcorn and tuna pasta with the only 'veg' being tomato and a few batons of cucumber and carrot. The sandwiches were with low fat cheese and followed by malt loaf. If anyone cares to join the sun and comment I think we could educate their nutritionist Amanda Ursell. No wonder people think sweetcorn and spaghetti are vegetables when articles like this are put out in the press.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/264...ow-much-you-should-really-be-serving-to-kids/

If anyone fancies leaving a comment or writing to Ms Ursell it might help. I did try to comment but it's not showing up yet.

 

[azure]

Those portions look pretty moderate to me. Perhaps they chose the kind of meals they thought many children would be eating or just kept it simple to,show the portion progression.?

I agree there should be more green veg there. I'm always shocked by how little veg people eat (both children and adults)

I wouldn't describe the meals as "terrible".

 

[douglas99]

You actually left a comment saying sweetcorn isn't a vegetable?
But let the tomato go?

Looks a better meal than a Big Mac for a normal kid to me though.

 

[dawnmc]

It lacks imagination as a diet, and I'm not making excuses, but some kids can be fussy eaters. I say that as a mum of 4, 2 would eat anything I put in front of them (all home cooked). The other 2 were really fussy. They are all healthy skinnys now, and eat anything. One of the fussiest has become vegan and his food is very imaginative. I think the ground work has to be put in from the beginning and kids given good choices. It's so easy in our consumer world to be sloppy and lazy.

 

[seadragon]

You actually left a comment saying sweetcorn isn't a vegetable?
But let the tomato go?

Looks a better meal than a Big Mac for a normal kid to me though.

Because sweetcorn isn't a vegetable it's a cereal - corn - from which comes HFCS etc. Assumed everyone here would be aware tomatoes are a fruit and that's why I mentioned it a 'veg' i.e because we know it isn't..

It may be a better meal than a Big Mac but this was portrayed as a healthy meal for children (in an article about obesity) and while the article was more about portion sizing I don't think one that encourages parents to think sweetcorn is a vegetable and that they should be using low fat everything is a good one in this context. This is why I put it originally in the low carb diet forum as I was assuming those are the people who would be interested, particularly in the very high carb content of every meal and lack of any veg except a few carrot and cucumber batons.

I am disappointed that comments on a diabetes site think these meals are OK to put in front of kids but then maybe that's why we have a problem. If they'd put peas instead of sweetcorn it would be a bit better. The low fat cheese and skimmed milk is just plain bad advice.

 

[douglas99]

Because sweetcorn isn't a vegetable it's a cereal - corn - from which comes HFCS etc. Assumed everyone here would be aware tomatoes are a fruit and that's why I mentioned it a 'veg' i.e because we know it isn't..

It may be a better meal than a Big Mac but this was portrayed as a healthy meal for children (in an article about obesity) and while the article was more about portion sizing I don't think one that encourages parents to think sweetcorn is a vegetable and that they should be using low fat everything is a good one in this context. This is why I put it originally in the low carb diet forum as I was assuming those are the people who would be interested, particularly in the very high carb content of every meal and lack of any veg except a few carrot and cucumber batons.

I am disappointed that comments on a diabetes site think these meals are OK to put in front of kids but then maybe that's why we have a problem. If they'd put peas instead of sweetcorn it would be a bit better. The low fat cheese and skimmed milk is just plain bad advice.

Technically corn kernels are a fruit.

 

[seadragon]

Those portions look pretty moderate to me. Perhaps they chose the kind of meals they thought many children would be eating or just kept it simple to,show the portion progression.?

I agree there should be more green veg there. I'm always shocked by how little veg people eat (both children and adults)

I wouldn't describe the meals as "terrible".

It is an article about childhood obesity, the plates are full of almost nothing but carbs, they are advising low fat cheese and skimmed milk - isn't this what many of us believe to be where the problems start, leading to insulin resistance obesity and diabetes in those who may be genetically predisposed? This is why I put it in the low carb diet forum as they are the people I thought would agree and be interested enough to comment. If you are talking about healthy eating then you should be using healthy meals as your reference - these don't even follow the Eatwell plate which most of us feel is terrible - these are just carbs with a tiny bit of protein and no fat.

 

[azure]

As I said, I guess they chose what they believed to be the kind of meals children might be eating in order to illustrate appropriate portion sizes of those meals.

The article was focussed on portion size. As you imply, there are many factors involved in childhood obesity. Portion size is just one of those.

There was an interesting discussion recently about the cause of increasing obesity in children, which covered a number of angles. I think it was in response to the sugar tax. If I remember the title, I'll post a link here.

 

[seadragon]

Technically corn kernels are a fruit.

Technically I think we could argue about whether it's a fruit, a starchy veg or a grain/cereal but either way it should be counted as a carbohydrate source. You can argue that rice and wheat are fruits as I believe they come from the same family. Would people serve pasta and potatoes in one meal on the grounds potatoes are a starchy veg? If they did would you say it was healthy when they are not having any other sources of non-starchy veg? In a national newspaper shouldn't a nutritionist be careful to show meals that are healthy rather than ones that they think kids might eat? I despair for the future of Britain's kids with this sort of information.

 

[douglas99]

As you've seen though, it seems the opinion is those are generally healthy for normal people.
Personally, in this day of unlimited cheap food, I think it's far better to concentrate on eating the correct amount of home prepared healthy freshly made food, remembering the target audience of the paper you are quoting.
I worry more when I see advice to simply eat as much as you want to until full.
That's how I got morbidly obese, and diabetic.

 

[mist]

Say what now?