I feel the parents of overweight children...?

I feel we should go after the companies that target their junkie food and candy at children. Make them start manufacturing foods with quality ingredients, and create more low sodium and natural sugar items so that parents have healthy options, instead of loading everything with high fructose corn syrup and salt and lard.

I feel we ought to have programs parents can afford, and pay teachers more to bring back extra curricular sports opportunities for children to participate in.

Fat kids parents are poor. They buy cheap food, and can't afford dance classes, or gym memberships. Give them options, not fines.

This isn't fair - my children all eat the same foods, in correct portion sizes.

My three year old, despite getting plenty of exercise, healthy foods, correct portion sizes and has no health problems, is overweight.

I am a GP (though have not practiced since my eldest was born 6 years ago), and I would have concerned parents in all the time with their overweight children - until having my own overweight child, I never fully believed that these parents were only feeding these children healthy functional foods and correct portion sizes.

The human genome is a complicated thing - each person has around 25,000 genes. The gene that controls weight has been proven to be the reason for unexplained weight gain. It would be way too expensive and time consuming to test each overweight child to see if they are expressing the "over weight" allele for the weight gene.

Look here - the second paragraph states how genes may be responsible

http://www.cdc.gov/features/obesity/?mobile=nocont...

After witnessing this myself, I am certain genes play a large part in unexplained weight gain in both children and adults.

I would be absolutely mortified if I was charged with child abuse, neglect and child endangerment simply because my child is overweight. Yes, if all I fed my child was junk and takeaways, it would become a serious issue, but the fact is a lot of overweight children are not overweight solely because of food consumption

Do you have children? Controlling a child's food intake is not so simple, and if every parent with an overweight kid were processed through the court system on criminal charges, the courts would have little time to address all the real criminals. It is unfortunate that there are so many overweight children (in so many countries) but it is a result of public health policy, the food industry, societal habits, and personal choices. To place all the blame on the parents ignores the rest of the factors that influence a child's weight, and criminalizing the parents does nothing to support them in making good food choices for their family.

My daughter is 8 months old. She has been a heavy baby from the start being in the 91st centile as well as being tall for her age. All she gets is breastmilk, 1 stage 2 jar of baby food a day and some fruit. I suspect she will always be heavy, as everybody on her Father's side is. Her Father is a big tall man with a very stocky build and he looks healthy and rather lean at 290lbs. He is 320lbs at the moment so a little over but he's not supposed to be light. I am also relatively heavy for my height even at a healthy bf percentage. Don't make assumptions about things you don't understand properly. The BMI system is flawed and doesn't take into account that people have different builds and different features which might make them heavier. Not everyone has the same body type as you.

Fined?

And that helps the child how?

I do agree that childhood obesity without medical cause is the parents' responsibility. But a fine is not magically going to teach a family healthy eating and exercise habits. I think a lot more can be won by HELPING parents provide their children with the right food and exercise options.

So .. who decides what constitutes 'excessively overweight?'

And while I don't know how the laws work in Australia, (where you seem to be posting from), but in the US, a parent accused of child abuse/neglect isn't fined, but the child is put in foster care and the parents often go to jail. At present in the U.S., about 16-18% of children meet the criteria for obesity. WHERE are you going to find enough foster homes to contain them all? Or enough jail space or court time for all the parents?

I'm just copying and pasting my response to a near identical question yesterday, and also prefacing that I wish people were nearly as concerned with America's increasing stupidity rather than just waist lines.

Argh. I should really just type this out once and copy paste it rather than try and sort through my feelings and come up with something coherent every time someone asks this short-sighted question.

Firstly, where are you going to put these kids? Is there now an abundance of sweet, loving people waiting to adopt older children? Even if they are, 60% of the adult US population is overweight or obese. There aren't enough thin homes to go around.

I was 270 lbs by 8th grade. I'm not making this up, I lived it. I was way fat before it was fashionable. My parents admittedly should have done a better job encouraging better eating habits. I am likely always going to be heavier than what the damn BMI charts say I should, if for no other reason than I got a crapload of fat cells at an early age.

I also never got hit. I got driven to any extra curricular activity I wanted to get to by one of my two parents who were probably short on sleep having worked a double shift the night before. I have no student loans. My parents paid for my private college education - in cash.

I suppose I might have lost weight if someone would have ripped me from my home to place me with strangers that locked the fridge, but I could have ended up in a home with all cheap, processed food, and gorged myself on it even more. Maybe I would have been like upset or something from being taken away from my home

In some cases, yes the parent should be punished. When there are 400 lb 7 year olds, the parent needs to be fined. At that age it is the parent's fault. Those kids that are way too fat at that age cannot feed themselves for the most part, and trust me, it takes a lot of food to gain a pound.

However, when the child is older, like in the teens, you shouldn't be able to fine the parents. Sometimes, people want to be overweight because it looks better to them, and the teen can purposely gain weight. (I was really really skinny, and I absolutely hated it. I wanted to be on the chubby side)

However, for the most part older children can control what they eat. I was at a party with this excessively fat kid, and he ate a whole 16 inch pizza by himself!!! It is more or less self control of the individual.

I would like for children to be cared for and loved

It is dangerous for their health to be overweight but I can only help that the parents will TRY

My kids are not obese, but if they were, I wouldn't enjoy the government telling me my kids are fat. Sure, it can be sad seeing a 4 year old who weighs as much as me walking down the street, but with this, it's none of my, yours, or anyone elses business.