Why we're so blind to children's obesity
ON ONE and the same day we are presented with two seemingly conflicting stories, both concerning children’s weight.
The first is that the parents of obese children fail to realise that their offspring are dangerously fat.
Remarkable figures reveal that 31 per cent of parents did not appear to have noticed that their children were not just a tad chubby but life-threateningly fat. Four hundred children surveyed were clinically obese. Only four parents appreciated that their kids fell into that category.
Simultaneously we are informed that one fifth of girls under the age of eleven have already been on a diet. As young girls progress through school their body image deteriorates dramatically making them prone to vomiting or purging and crash dieting. What are we supposed to believe?
How can we be immune to fat, unable to see our own children’s voluminous waist measurements, oblivious of their vast thighs rubbing together, incapable of waking up to their inability to enjoy sport or resist pudding and at the same time so over-sensitive to weight that we turn a blind eye as our normal sized children try to shed imaginary pounds by starving themselves?
As a former famous fat person I think the explanation for our confusion lies in the numerous mixed and bewildering signals constantly punted in our direction. We are all suckers for chubby babies.
We adore their pneumatic knees and wrists. What’s more, there’s nothing more terrifying to a new parent than a baby that will not feed. We devour books telling us how to persuade baby to breastfeed.
We replace them with tomes delivering instructions on weaning, pureeing, preparing child-friendly recipes and how to keep our children nourished and hydrated at all times.
We can’t help seeing it as a mark of our excellent parenting if our toddlers are “good eaters”. We are relieved and thrilled when they polish off everything on their plates. We love them to be bonny and bouncing.
We gain confidence when they carry a few extra pounds. “They need a bit of a buffer to tide them through childhood illnesses,” we tell ourselves.
Weirdly at the same moment that we’re doing our level best to shovel food down our tiny tots, we’re obsessed with shifting our own baby weight. We are subsisting on a handful of calories a day, doing our utmost to “diet down” and into our skinny jeans.
We despise fat and revere slimness and we show it. Without meaning to, entirely inadvertently, we are sending out contradictory messages. “Eat – maybe a little too much – to be strong and robust. Eat – far too little – to be slim and svelte.”
In our homes, in front of our children, who suck up all we do like blobs of blotting paper, we are living out both today’s top news stories. It’s hardly surprising that exactly like ourselves, our children are both far too fat and far too thin, diet ignorers or diet obsessives. What’s the answer?
It’s easy to say but so hard to do. We must get back to healthy eating, active living, exercise and food as fuel not entertainment/comfort/or emotional solace.
It’s a tall order but it’s time we held a mirror up to our own eating and took responsibility for the potentially dire consquences.
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I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ve never baked a birthday cake for either of my offspring
Mary Berry would be appalled. I’m ashamed to admit it but I’ve never baked a birthday cake for either of my offspring.
I’ve always found the Colin the Caterpillar cake from Messrs Marks and Spencer (above) does the job perfectly. Or at least it has for 28 of my elder daughter’s 29 years.
My panic on Wednesday last when I arrived at that noble emporium to find they had sold out of Colins was excruciating. In vain, I substituted a holiday making pig in a sombrero cake and a hedgehog gateau.
Epic fail! I was informed by the “Jolly Good Fellow” that a birthday, sans Colin, was not really a birthday. I mentioned my lapse on the airwaves and hoped taking the family away for a weekend to Coworth Park at Ascot might compensate.
Little did I know that both the chefs at Coworth and the team at M&S had heard of my plight. Unbeknown to me not one but two Colins were being baked, iced and delivered, in two entirely different kitchens, ready to be festooned with candles and presented to the Birthday Girl at dinner. Talk about having our cake and eating it too! We went from caterpillar famine to infestation in 24 hours. We are awash with calories and gratitude.
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If DAME Helen Mirren, 69, didn’t exist we’d have had to invent her. She makes damn sure that women of a certain age are not invisible, nor inaudible, nor consigned to the wheelie bin.
She sizzles in a bikini, opines about anything she considers important and flaunts her fantastic sex-life for all she’s worth.
Her latest pronouncement is that sex in her 60s has been far more enjoyable than the “paranoid and empty” sex of her youth. She’s so keen she actually sets her alarm an hour early so she and her husband Taylor Hackford can indulge in a spot of how’s your father.
Truly, when the hot flushes engulf us, the stout underwear restricts our blood flow and we’ve mislaid our reading glasses for the 15th time, Dame Helen’s carnal shenanigans shine like a beacon of hope unto us all.
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A HIGHLIGHT of presenting the Early Breakfast Show on Radio 2 is dipping in for “the Friday hug” with Chris Evans.
Obviously last week’s hug had an extra frisson because the world’s press congregated outside the studio desperate to know if he’d be succeeding sacked Jeremy Clarkson.
Naturally I asked if he’d be zooming into what I assumed would be his dream job?
His answer stopped me in my tracks. “I adore cars but I love my radio show, presenting the One Show on Fridays and even more importantly my children, mum, grandchild and wife. If I took on Top Gear I’d never see any of them.”
Did you talk it through with your wife? “No need,” he replied. “She trusts me to do whatever I think is right.” Wow! What a woman! There you have it – the key to a supremely happy marriage.
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Normally I wouldn’t squander my column on the obnoxious drivel spouted by pathological attentionseeker Katie Hopkins but her hurtful comments on depression are so chronically wide of the mark I don’t want to ignore them.
Hopkins has seized upon the revelation that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot who deliberately flew Germanwings Flight 9525 into a mountainside, was being treated for recurrent depression, to launch a cruel and unfounded attack upon all those struggling with the debilitating illness.
Hopkins brands depression “the holy grail of illnesses”, calls it “the ultimate passport to selfobsession”, urges sufferers to “get a grip, people” and adds: “People with depression do not need a doctor and a bottle of something that rattles. They need a pair of running shoes and fresh air.”
Her intentionally unkind words show not only a chronic lack of empathy but also an obtuse and monumental ignorance.
If neither Hopkins nor those she loves have been stricken by a depression that knocks the ground from under them, robs them of their joie de vivre, ambition and sense of self, sends them spiralling downwards into sadness and isolation, she and they are supremely fortunate.
Clinical depression is a mental illness. It cannot be cured with “fresh air”, going for a run, willpower or a hearty dose of moral fibre.
It is neither imaginary nor indulgent. Those beset by it would trade all they own to be free of the “black dog” that squats upon their existence.
I’m all in favour of free speech but I detest those who disseminate malicious nonsense and give not a fig for those whose feelings they destroy along the way.
