Yes, I would say so. I also wrote about child obesity and the problems related to it in this article. Children who grow up overweight, with poor eating habits and no nutritional education or understanding, have no chance when they grow up. It’s our responsibility as adults and parents/aunties/uncles/grandparents/teachers/god parents/etc to set standars, be good role models and give the kids around us a chance to grow up to be healthy and active young adults.
I would go as far as calling it child abuse if you’re feeding your kids crap you call food and they turn into obese kids with diabetes and other health and diet related illnesses before they are even old enough to make their own decisions or to know better.
What’s your opinion on this matter?
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Awesome Åshild 
I agree that it is a scary problem. It is hard to change habits and even harder to change a culture – it seems overeating and feeding on junk has become a center of American culture (and in other successful countries as well!)
I agree with what you say about feeding your children junk being close to child abuse. In this day in age, there really should be little to no ignorance on healthy food versus unhealthy food. Parents need to show a little more responsibility for their kids. (One reason I hate that Honey Boo Boo show – I can’t watch it without getting upset with their eating habits!)
I’ve never actually watched Honey Boo Boo, but saw the ads for it back home in Norway and that was enough!
This issue is one that I am really passionate about and it makes me angry thinking about it!
I agree completely. It irritates me to see two obese parents with obese children in tow. And if you ask the parents why they don’t feed the kids more nutritious food, they say “He won’t eat anything but McDonald’s.” Excuse me, but does your 8 year-old have a car? If you only offer good food, he’ll eat it eventually. But first you have to remove the Twinkies from the pantry.
That’s so true. If the kid has never tasted it and never been given the option, he wouldn’t know what it was.
Eat up your dinner or go to bed hungry. Eventually they will earn to eat what’s cooked.
I know!! I was talking to a friend of mine that told me her niece (who is 4 btw!) doesn’t eat anything except for McDonald’s french fries and chicken nuggets! I was freaked out! my daughter, who is 3 NEVER EVER stepped foot into a McDonald’s in her life! and we live across one, if we walk we can be there in 2-3 minutes, but I never took her there and I never will! I’m against McDonald’s and all of those big shot corporations! me and my husband don’t eat there, so why would we feed our daughter that crap?
Oh, and another thing that bugs me is when some random mom comes to me and asks me if my daughter doesn’t eat much because she looks skinny, and I’m asking “what are you talking about? she has a normal weight and height for her age!” but then I see her kid, and it’s a chubby or even fat little piggy and then I understand :)) it’s not my kid that has a problem, it’s your kid that’s overweight!!
That is so true, there’s fewer and fewer normally sized kids arounds, so the ones who are, look skinny in the crowd. Pretty sad!
This is true, I was never fed crap as a child (literally or figuratively thankfully) i wan’t given sweets (my mum didn’t want me to get a taste for them….that didn’t work so well…but i am working on that) and I ate proper cooked meals, I was a skinny tall child who was always outside playing and such. I have eaten crap (figuratively) since I have been an adult, but I have always been aware that it is crap, I was given the right information to make choices…
Kids do get nutritional education at school, it is in science and pse curricula as well whatever the new name for home economics is, but if it is not backed up at home they have no hope of believing it! one of the worst thing s is parents who use McDonalds / sweets etc as a treat…it automatically puts it into a category that makes kids think it is a really good thing and that healthy food is less exciting…
Last week at my gym (chain of gyms) it was Childhood Obesity week…they ran al sorts of events to get kids active…I think it was a good idea but a) was badly named…should have been called active kids week or something, and b) it will probably take more than a week.
True, True and True!
Hi there! I would definitely suggest you read a book by one of my favorite scholars–her name is Julie Guthman and she is a professor at UC Santa Cruz. Her book is entitled ‘Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism.’ She does a really good job of critiquing some of the current dialogue surrounding the obesity ‘epidemic.’ While I don’t completely agree with the book (she does a GREAT job of asking questions and not always the best job of answering them) it is a good read that offers another perspective on how obesity is framed in our current culture.
Sounds interesting, I will look into it 🙂