Generally mothers were more concerned about daughters than sons – presumably because it’s okay to be a ‘big and strong’ boy. All parents should, at least once a year, check their children’s position on the ‘BMI for age’ chart (see the previous post).

*Maternal concern and perceptions of overweight in Australian preschool-aged children. Medical Journal of Australia, 2006.

As with adults we use, the Body Mass Index, or BMI, calculation which factors in height as well as weight. For children we need a further layer – a standardised chart that brings in their age. Fortunately the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA has done all the hard work of collecting the data. If you go to this link – Clinical Growth Charts – you can download the charts and plot your children’s BMI and age over time. There are a lot of charts on offer, which can be confusing. I suggest you download, under the ‘Children 2 to 20 years (5th-95th percentile)’ heading the Girls/Boys ‘BMI-for-age’ chart.

To work out your child’s BMI to plot on the chart go to this link – Child and Teen BMI Calculator (we Aussies will need to click on ‘Metric’ to switch input data to kgs) and fill in the information. If they are at the 85th percentile or higher they are overweight. This means that they weigh the same or more than 85% of their peers. At the 95th percentile they are obese.

I’ve just been researching the childhood obesity story and came across this very solid data from the UK. It is government data from a large national measurement programme which weighs children when they start primary and secondary school. Apparently, officials have previously admitted that its figures are likely to be an underestimate, as the scheme is voluntary, and overweight children are the most likely to refuse to be weighed.

Boys were more likely to be overweight than girls. Poorer, less educated areas had higher rates again, which were balanced down by better-off, more educated parts of Britain. Mothers buying convenience food rather than preparing healthy meals (often because they don’t know how to) was thought to be a major factor.

The problem is expected to cripple their healthcare system (the NHS) in years to come if something is not done rather differently.

Unfortunately, it is likely that story is no better here in Australia as our overall rates of adult obesity are essentially the same as the UK.

• was a good cook
• lived with a good cook
• or had a parent who was a good cook

I can tell you, from a psychotherapist’s point of view, that to fall in the first or second categories, you usually needed to have come from the third. Wansink’s team went on to research 317 ‘good cooks’ (at least one other person had to agree with the self-opinion!) to find out what they were doing right. He identified five different kinds of cooks:

• Giving cooks
• Competitive cooks
• Healthy cooks
• Methodical cooks
• Innovative cooks

All cooks but one, promoted the health of their family. Which one? The Giving cooks – unfortunately the most common type – these are the makers of comfort food! Unconsciously, they know that by giving rich, fattening foods, at one level, they are giving pleasure – if only it didn’t send us to an early grave. Unwittingly, these culinary experts used their skill for evil instead of good (ok, that’s overstating it George!) to make energy-dense, high carb foods such as baked cakes, brownies and other sweet foods for desserts. And what did the other four types do that promoted the health of their families? They used their cooking to increase the variety of foods that those around them ate. Like any great chef, they were much more interested in fresh, wholesome foods as central to this variety.

Wansink gives us five strategies for increasing the variety in kids meals:

1. Buying a greater range of foods for the family home
2. Trying new recipes (including ethnic ones)
3. Substituting different, healthier ingredients (veggies and spices) into favourite recipes
4. Taking kids to the grocery store and letting them choose a new, healthy food (something my brilliant Psychologist wife worked out 15 years ago when this research was not yet a light bulb in the researcher’s thought bubble!)
5. Visiting a range of authentic ethnic restaurants (kids are more likely to try new foods on a ‘special’ night out with a bit of healthy peer group pressure!)

Food for thought (sorry!) for any parent!

Should parents be held responsible for their child’s obesity? The proponents of advertising junk food to children argue that what children eat should not be controlled by regulation, by a ‘national nanny’, it should be up to parents to ultimately decide what their children eat.  But can they? Can parents compete with the one billion dollars spent each year on the estimated 30,000 advertisements their children will be influenced by? Can parents compete with cheap junk food being available at every turn? It’s a  simple idea to blame and charge parents – but ‘simple’ is the only word I can find to explain the attraction of charging parents with abuse – pity that obesity is an incredibly complex pyschophysiological condition.

To my mind, we can’t blame parents until we first give them the resources they need to do the job properly and then they fail to use them. They need a lot of help. Government need to help them by treating the marketing of foods to children in exactly the same way as they treat the marketing of cigarettes and alcohol to children and teenagers – for exactly the same reasons! Excess food, like excess alcohol, is dangerous to the health of our precious children. Secondly, parents need help in how to create healthy eating habits in their children – while our work is obviously all about this – we are at the beginning of a very long haul and we need lots of help.

Let’s remember exactly why it is that we don’t advertise cigarettes and alcohol to children and why we don’t rely just on parents to discourage kids from smoking and drinking …

The first book, Taste with your face: Adventures in healthy eating, is all about teaching children to savour their food. Tasting with your face, rather than just your mouth, is about using your eyes and nose as well. In this way we come fully into the now to get maximum tasting pleasure – remember, we eat more because we taste less. By tasting more, it becomes so much easier to eat less.

I say ‘mostly’ had a lot of fun, because when I’m writing I normally only have myself to argue with. I could ask an opinion of someone and if I didn’t like what I heard, I could go away and do it my way. Not so now …

Today, driving to work, I had this troubling insight come to me. … I’ve realised Penny has this extremely annoying habit - she significantly improves any work I do!