Mums, we need to talk about fattism – if we can’t own up to the fact we are feeding our kids into an early grave it’s game over.
If I see an overweight child walking down the street, I immediately blame the parents.
We aren’t allowed to fat shame in Ireland but it’s OK to criticise a company for bringing out an app to educate kids on healthy eating.
If parents can’t help a nation rife with obese children maybe it’s only fit and just to give our children the knowledge to take their weight fate into their own hands.
Step up Weight Watchers who are empowering young kids with their Kurbo app.
The new app is being vilified worldwide by experts who believe it could create a tsunami of kids developing an unhealthy relationship with food.
But aren’t we already making our kids fat by allowing them to stuff their gobs with unhealthy snacks?
I’m guilty of it myself, I’ve often placated my tots with filler snacks just to prevent World War 3, but we are losing the battle of the bulge.
My three-year-old equates good behaviour with sweets, we try to bake home goods but convenient snacks are the easy way out.
Finnish native Dr Eva Orsmond was slammed a few years back for stating the obvious, Irish kids are getting fatter.
Scientifically-proven
Weight Watchers say Kurbo is “a scientifically-proven behaviour change program” for kids between the ages of eight and 17.
Dietitians, nutritionists and advocacy organisations blasted the app this week saying it could lead to an unhealthy relationship with food, or even towards an eating disorder.
Yet the World Health Organisation said childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century.
It’s a global public health crisis which needs to be addressed at scale, said Kurbo co-founder Joanna Strober.
She added: “As a mum whose son struggled with his weight at a young age, I can personally attest to the importance and significance of having a solution like Kurbo by Weight Watchers, which is inherently designed to be simple, fun and
effective.”
Kurbo is based, in part, on the
Pediatric Weight Control Program developed at Stanford University’s Children’s Health Centre for Healthy Weight.
The app is supposed to create healthy eating habits through a traffic light system.
It separates foods into healthy green options, yellow foods like meat or dairy products that should be consumed more moderately, and red foods like chips
and sweets that should only be eaten occasionally.
Yes, categorising food as good or bad could potentially lead to a guilty feeling when a child gulps down a can of Coke.
But wouldn’t we rather our kids to be fit and healthy than to panic about their feelings surrounding crap food and fizzy drinks?
Obesity is just as tragic as anorexia or bulimia and has overtaken these conditions in its ferocious ability to gobble up our youth.
It’s about time we stopped pussy footing around the word “fat” and call a spade, a spade. We need to consume less junk, eat more fruit and veg and save our children from a life fraught with serious health conditions.
Obese people outnumber smokers by two to one and it is the cause of 13 different types of cancer.
If the Government won’t intervene maybe it’s about time a company
like Weight Watchers attempts to solve yet another avoidable epidemic gripping the nation.
Did we ever see our grandparents waddling around our streets? No because they cooked from scratch and handy snacks did not exist.
A decade ago French Women Don’t Get Fat rocked the Anglophone boat.
The telling book had us munching down on one square of dark chocolate a night attempting to svelte up like our suave European counterparts. But author Mireille Guiliano was on to something, after fattening up during her time as an exchange student in America, her dad told her she looked like a sack of potatoes.
The French say it like it is and so she put pen to paper as to why French women don’t get fat. Let’s go one step further, as of 2016, the French Ministry of Health reported obesity levels among nine and 10-year-olds had fallen to just 3.6%. You don’t see many corpulent French children or tiny tots waddling around with porky cheeks? Why?
French kids eat baguettes but mainly in the morning when their metabolism is operating at a higher speed, they get fed healthy school dinners and vending machines are banned in schools.
But more importantly French parents aren’t afraid to say no to rubbish. It’s a simple equation – remove the junk and you’ve hit the jackpot.
We should be hammering home the truth, being overweight is dangerous and it’s irresponsible of parents to watch their children descend into blubber.
- Siobhan O’Connor is a professional personal trainer with Fitcert
