One in five Asian children is either overweight or obese. And, whether you blame it on nature, nurture, the invention of the burger or the rise of fast food, it’s certain that something needs to be done. But how far can parents and the family reverse this scary statistic?
There are many overlapping forces that contribute to childhood obesity. Parents are busy. Working hours are long. It is hard to make time for exercise. Fast food is cheap and easy. Children love sugar, salt and fat. Television stations advertise junk food while children sit and watch them, one eye on the packet of chips in the pantry.
The World Health Organisation predicts that this will be the first generation to have a lower life expectancy then their parents. This has shocked many of us. The problem of overweight children is more and more a serious concern for parents, who are left with medical bills, threats of type 2 diabetes, bullying at school, and general worry for their children’s health.
Born followers?
A new study has examined how much parents can do, and should do, when trying to help their kids lose weight and develop healthy attitudes towards eating, nutrition and exercise. The study, Parent-Only Treatment for Childhood Obesity, suggests that if you educate parents on the topic of weight loss, their children follow suit. These kids lose as much weight, in fact, as those children are who being educated outside the family about nutrition and exercise.
Parent-guided nutrition and exercise education is a cost-effective and easy method of keeping kids healthy. It is best prescribed as a ‘do-as-I-do’, as much as a ‘do-as-I-say’, style of parenting. This means parents actually have to start exercising themselves and consciously bringing a healthy attitude towards nutrition and food into the home.
Family first
“The family is the underutilised weapon in the fight against childhood obesity,” says US-based David Ludwig, the director of the obesity program at the Children’s Hospital in Boston.
But parents are often lovingly blind when it comes to their children’s appearance, he says. What seems to them like harmless baby fat, or a ‘plumpness’ they will grow out of, can hide a real health issue. Some parents only learn their children are overweight when they discover signs of diabetes.
Health isn’t the only issue. Overweight children are more likely to be teased by their peers or to develop low self-esteem or body image problems to last a lifetime. Once children are overweight, it requires much more effort to restore them to a healthy weight than it does staying at a healthy weight in the first place. Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight adults.
A family’s eating patterns dramatically influence a child’s weight. Many overweight parents may be less concerned about their children also being overweight than parents who are a healthy weight. The first step, then, is developing healthy habits at home – for everyone.
Health starts at home
Teaching healthy habits is key, says Louise Fulton Keats, an Australian cook who is writing a nutrition cookbook for babies and toddlers. She adopts a strict “banish all nutritionally empty things from your fridge, pantry, trolley” policy.
“Your shopping trolley should mainly consist of vegetables, whole foods and low-fat dairy,” she says. “Before you reach the check-out at the supermarket, look down. If your trolley is full of biscuits, instant noodles and soda drinks, go and put them back.”
Shopping is all-important because once the food is unpacked at home, the kids will see they have permission to eat it. The kitchen should be full of healthy, nutritious snacks, from bowls of cut up fruit in the fridge, to vegetable sticks and sushi and low-fat yoghurt when the kids come home from school. If there are no soda drinks available from an early age, they are less likely to develop a taste for them. Water, tea or diluted juices with no-added-sugar are perfect alternatives.
Fulton Keats says that typically children's diets are often heavy in saturated fats, and that we should be looking at consuming more rice, fish, tofu and other lean proteins and vegetables, while adding soy sauce, fresh herbs or spices for flavour instead of more oil. Variety, testing all the time for changing likes and dislikes, is key.
“Children who are fussy eaters tend to have parents who are fussy eaters. The best thing parents can do is eat a variety of foods themselves. If their child doesn’t want to eat something new at first that is fine, but eventually they will get used to it and like it,” says Fulton Keats.
Western-style takeaway is a poor choice if you want to lose weight, and this is why, says Fulton Keats. “If you try to emulate an Italian takeaway, like pizza, in your own kitchen you would have to add a lot of salt, some sugar and lot of fat and oil to make it taste similar. The number one concern of restaurant chefs is to make food taste good, they don’t care about your waist line. But you do. Cooking at home gives you the chance to know exactly what is going into your body,” she says.
TV tantrums
Globally, children watch, on average, about 2.5 hours of television a day. On top of this they play computer games and other electronic games. Sedentary pastimes are replacing physical activity.
Fulton Keats says television-watching time and unhealthy foods are often handed out as treats or rewards for children. Not only does this hinder their health, it affects their perceptions of what value to place on these things.
“If you say ‘eat your choy sum and you can have some chocolate’, it suggests choy sum is a chore and chocolate is a prize. Instead, ask your child to choose a day (and choose your own while you’re at it) that is ‘chocolate day’ or ‘ice cream day’. The child chooses the day and that becomes absolutely the only day they are allowed a little chocolate. This stops them pestering you about chocolate for the rest of the week. You might say Tuesdays and birthday parties only. And there can be no exceptions at all to that rule.”
As for non-food rewards, instead of offering an hour of television, offer a trip to the beach, or a swim at the pool, or a run around a park. Go with them and have fun running around together. After all, being healthy is supposed to be a family affair.