[OnTheIce]

Personally, I think it has little to do with sugar, video games and TV and more to do with additives, hormones and such in our foods today. Genetics plays a role too.

We have all our meats packed with growth hormones, too many foods use aspartame and our milk......nothing like it used to be.

[Unsound]

It really is tough to feed the kids well. Processed garbage is cheaper easier and often tastier than real home made food. I'm just gratefull that my kids so far have a taste for fresh veggies and that we're(barely) able to afford for my wife to stay home so she has the time and opportunity to make good meals and lunches.

If i was raising them on my I own... I shudder to think how they'd be eating. Not because I can't cook. I can. But because a short workday for me is 10 hours. By the time I picked them up and got them home to eat... mcdonalds, pixzza, and kraft dinner would probably be frequent guests at our house.

[Gabriella95]

I congratulate all the many people who ensure the smooth running of this FORUM

Mod edit - Thank you. You now owe $0.18 for your electronic execution.

[Lemmy]

The rise of childhood obesity has a lot less to do with the "food" side than the "exercise" side of the chemistry. The foods we ate when I was a kid/teenager in the 70s & 80s were at least as bad as they are today. When you think about transfats and sodium, we likely had poorer diet 30 years ago. But as 2Cdo noted, even the fat kids back then weren't fat by today's standards. Send kids the fuck outside to play and they'll be able to eat candy and go to McDonalds without growing a lard ass.

[2Cdo]

Lemmy Lemmy:

The rise of childhood obesity has a lot less to do with the "food" side than the "exercise" side of the chemistry. The foods we ate when I was a kid/teenager in the 70s & 80s were at least as bad as they are today. When you think about transfats and sodium, we likely had poorer diet 30 years ago. But as 2Cdo noted, even the fat kids back then weren't fat by today's standards. Send kids the fuck outside to play and they'll be able to eat candy and go to McDonalds without growing a lard ass.

Agreed 100%. A proper diet without exercise will still result in fat children. Most kids today get NO daily exercise, including getting mommy or daddy to write notes excluding them from phys ed. It probably doesn't help that over 50% of the adult population is overweight and slothlike as well.

[Benn]

Restaurants and clothing companies alike are trying to make parents feel their kids are normal and not overweight or a bit overweight as evidenced, for me at least, by the fact my kids are both rated 50 percentile in height and weight, using medical standards at least, if one buys into those. Still the clothes made for my kids ages are all about half a size to a full size too big, just in the waist. You'd think clothing makers would make a size for 5 year olds for the average kid. Well they do, but not the healthy average. My wife tells me womans clothing sizes have changed too over the years. Todays size 6 was like an 8 years ago or something.

Kids portions at restaurants are more than my kids can normally eat. I see parents telling their kids to finish all the food, "we paid for that." For me, my kids are full they are full. I don't assume an average kid should eat as much as they give.

Never fear, I'm sure someone will change the BMI to stop making people feel fatter one day

[coaster_dot]

It's just going to get worse.

I'm thankful to have been born at the edge of the 80's/90's era to understand life before the internet. It's sad, even people who are only like 2 years younger then me are just lazy/stupid. I am one of the 7 people in my house who: go outside, workout, walk to get things, walk to bars, know how to flip a breaker switch, turn on/off gas for water heater/furnace, mow the lawn, program a garage door opening, operate a gas stove and grill, ect. People are stupid/lazy now. They would rather use an Iphone to look up the cheapest service instead of learning how to do it them self.

/vent

But I have noticed that there are a lot of college kids at my school who care about eating healthy and staying in shape...of course though that is still in my generation somewhat. I also think Milwaukee was ranked "most fit city" to that extent a while back.

I just walked 5 blocks there and back to get a case of beer and a pack of smokes...because I care about my health

[Strutz]

Lemmy Lemmy:

The rise of childhood obesity has a lot less to do with the "food" side than the "exercise" side of the chemistry. The foods we ate when I was a kid/teenager in the 70s & 80s were at least as bad as they are today. When you think about transfats and sodium, we likely had poorer diet 30 years ago. But as 2Cdo noted, even the fat kids back then weren't fat by today's standards. Send kids the fuck outside to play and they'll be able to eat candy and go to McDonalds without growing a lard ass.

I agree. I was a child in the 70`s and we ate a fair amount of junk food but were also always outside playing, and had daily gym class at school and those calories just burned right off. There was nothing on the limited TV channels to watch anyway and video games were yet to be heard of. Playing indoors was something you did when it was raining.

However... OTI makes a good point about additives and growth hormones that are present in our food now, much moreso than they used to be, especially whan it comes to our meat and related animal products (eggs, dairy products).

I think it`s a combination of all these factors that have lead us to this point.