Parents ignore children's fat

[Guest guest]

I wasn't going to post another one about obesity, but as I saw one each about obesity in USA, NZ and the UK it just seems weird that the last 10 years has made many of the human race bigger and bigger. Is it the computers slowing the thyroid? I know the electricity wires give off a frequency which depresses the thyroid, so are there too many electromagnetic waves in the surroundings causing the body metabolism to slow down? Mobile phones? Just saw some photos of a crowd of Americans on a beach in the early 70's and they were all slim. Wonder if it's all the dairy and hormones in it that fatten the cows? Estrogen in the foodchain from plastics and soy? Cattle fattening hormones in meat? The Pill, which used to be about 300 times stronger than normal hormones? Cows are given lucern with estrogen to fatten up. It just seems sad to see the physical body devolve. Then people take steroids to pump it up artificially! N

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3110060a7144,00.html

 

Parents ignore children's fat 27 November 2004

 

 

By MICHELLE BROOKERMany parents with obese or overweight children fail to recognise their child has a weight problem, a new study shows.

 

The findings published in today's British Medical Journal found some parents showed a lack of concern towards their children's weight problems.

Researchers surveyed the parents of 277 children and discovered only a quarter recognised when their children were overweight.

One-third of mothers and 57 per cent of fathers of obese children thought their sons and daughters were "about right".

More than half the parents with obese children did express some concern about their children's condition, but only a quarter of parents with overweight children described themselves as a "little worried" about it.

Parents were less likely to recognise overweight boys than girls.

Researchers also found that 40% of mothers and 45% of fathers who were overweight judged their own weight to be about right.

 

 

One of the study's authors Alison Jeffery, a senior research nurse at the Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, said the findings were "alarming".

"The apparent lack of parental concern about their overweight children is probably due to a lack of awareness, but must be addressed if we are to halt an impending health crisis," she said.

Fight the Obesity Epidemic spokeswoman, Wellington endocrinologist Dr Robyn Toomath, said the findings were not a surprise.

"To some extent the medical profession could have contributed to this," she said.

"There is a great reluctance for doctors to point out when a child is overweight.

"They do not wish to stigmatise a young child who may be uncomfortable because of their weight."

Toomath said that in some circumstances identifying that a child had a weight problem would not result in a change in behaviour.

"That is a cynical view," she said.

"Telling someone their child needs to watch less television and do more exercise may not result in that happening but you have to give them the opportunity not to put that packet of chips in their child's lunchbox.

"I predict that the majority of those parents (interviewed) are overweight and are in denial about their children's weight and themselves."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3115887a7144,00.html

 

Concerns about links between obesity and town design 02 December 2004

 

 

Public health officials want more attention paid to links between obesity and the way towns and cities are built in this country.

 

The issue is raised by two officials in this month's edition of Doctor magazine, with Virginia Hope of the Auckland Regional Public Health Service suggesting more research was needed into an ecological approach to health.

Leadership was needed to develop the research, which could help in town planning, she said.

Health Sponsorship Council special projects manager Tane Cassidy pointed to issues such as the ease of walking or cycling to work or school.

Mr Cassidy spoke about the issue at the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity meeting in Auckland, having previously attended a conference in the United States dealing with the link between obesity and the built environment.

The message in the US had been that opportunities for physical activity tended to be much less than they could be, he said.

While this country was different from the US, many of the same trends showed up.

 

"We don't do as much activity as we used to. We drive our kids to school more often and don't let them bike or walk."

Partly that was because of people's concerns about safety, which could be due to the way places were designed.

Good design could increase the opportunities for incidental activity, such as encouraging people to do more walking, without being aware they were doing so, as they went about their daily business.

That might result, for example, from a better public transport system in Auckland, Mr Cassidy said.

In Wellington, structures encouraged people to walk from the train station to their workplaces but the city was not cycle friendly.

Improving built environments could be among a range of approaches needed to deal with obesity, he said.

Concern about the effects of some kinds of development on people's weight have gained increasing prominence in the US during the past few years.

A study of nearly 11,000 people in Atlanta, published in the middle of the year, found those living in highly residential areas tended to weigh significantly more than those in places where homes and businesses were close together.

The effect appeared to be largely the result of the amount of time people spent driving or walking. Each hour in a car was associated with a six percent increase in the likelihood of obesity and each half-mile (800m) walked per day reduced the chance by nearly five percent, researchers found.

Meanwhile, early observations from a University of Otago nutrition study show parents of overweight or obese children do not view their children that way.

The pilot programme for lifestyle and exercise - known as the APPLE project - had found two-thirds of parents with overweight children viewed them as normal, Doctor reported.

A fifth of parents had rated their obese children as normal and a third had viewed them as overweight.

The project, involving more than 500 Otago primary school children, aimed to prevent excessive weight gain in children aged five to 12, with researchers encouraging every child in the study to be a little more active each day.

The magazine quoted researcher Rachel Taylor saying that at baseline, 70.1 per cent of children were normal weight, and 30 per cent overweight or obese.

Along with the lack of parental awareness of overweight children, sugary drink consumption was high, a large proportion of children watched too much television and plain milk was rarely drunk, she said.

Seventy per cent of children watched television or a video every day, but only seven per cent did so for less than an hour.

The researchers aimed to get children to reduce their television watching time to fewer than two hours daily, with the ultimate goal being no more than an hour

Fat Americans overwhelm imaging machines

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3115682a7144,00.html

02 December 2004

 

 

 

 

 

CHICAGO: Obese Americans are overwhelming medical imaging machines that now have a hard time peering inside their bodies, doctors have reported.

 

"Hospital radiology departments are increasingly unable to adequately image and assess obese patients because of the limitations in current radiology equipment," said Raul Uppot, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Equipment makers "need to think about design changes and technological advancements to obtain quality imaging in larger patients," he added.

"In the meantime, radiologists need to be aware of the limitations of their current imaging equipment and optimise current protocols and equipment settings to accommodate America's fattening population," Uppot said.

He and colleagues released their report at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. It was based on a review of 15 years of radiologic exams at the Boston hospital that had been labelled as being of limited use because of body size.

The percentage of such reports nearly doubled over the period, the researchers said, and corresponded to increases in obesity in the United States. Over the 15 years, obesity increased in Massachusetts from 9 per cent of the population to 16 per cent.

The biggest problems were with abdominal ultrasound followed by chest X-ray and abdominal computed tomography, the report said.

 

 

 

More than 60 per cent of Americans are overweight or obese, with a much higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers than people of healthy weight.

The American Obesity Association estimates that 127 million people in the United States are overweight, 60 million are obese, and 9 million are severely obese.