Is There An Obseity Epidemic In Canada?

[Aaron]

On our recent trip to Kingstown I became aware of something that's been on the fringes of my vision for a while here. Everywhere I look I see fat kids, at the hotel pool I saw a kid that was 10-12 that weighed around 150 lbs. He looked liked a beachball with eyes. Another kid had a kool-aid? gut. At my sons school I see kids everywhere that are fatter than fuck and there is a six year old in his class that looks like a bowlingball, he's so round. In town there are kids everywhere with guts and mans boobs and the girls are Rosie O'Donnell look alike's.

Now this is byt no means a scientific sampling but rather what I've started to notice in the last two years since my son started going to school. And I became more aware of my childrens nutrition. In contrast my children are both very thin and my daughter is in the bottom third percentile for size and weight for her age.

My psychologist tells me that the biggest predictor of adult obseity is childhood obseity. So is it just the kids in my town or is Canada as a whole on it's way to becoming a nation of fatasses?

[Darth Wong]

On our recent trip to Kingstown I became aware of something that's been on the fringes of my vision for a while here. Everywhere I look I see fat kids, at the hotel pool I saw a kid that was 10-12 that weighed around 150 lbs. He looked liked a beachball with eyes. Another kid had a kool-aid? gut. At my sons school I see kids everywhere that are fatter than fuck and there is a six year old in his class that looks like a bowlingball, he's so round. In town there are kids everywhere with guts and mans boobs and the girls are Rosie O'Donnell look alike's.

Now this is byt no means a scientific sampling but rather what I've started to notice in the last two years since my son started going to school. And I became more aware of my childrens nutrition. In contrast my children are both very thin and my daughter is in the bottom third percentile for size and weight for her age.

My psychologist tells me that the biggest predictor of adult obseity is childhood obseity. So is it just the kids in my town or is Canada as a whole on it's way to becoming a nation of fatasses?

The younger generation is definitely fatter. There's also a socio-economic correlation; smaller communities tend to have lower average educational levels, which are roughly correlated to higher levels of childhood (and adult) obesity.

As with many national trends, we are lagging behind the US but we are on the same curve.

[Spyder]

Regrettably it looks like we're heading that way too. It does appear to be much more common in smaller towns then it is in Wellington.

[Covenant]

It'll happen everywhere there's enough affluence and not enough education. It's simply too easy to get fat in a world where you spend a vast majority of your day sitting down working, sitting down being transported to work, or sitting down trying to recover from a long day of transport and work.

The solution is just to move more, simple as that. If people were more active, they would be less fat. People even get fat eating relatively upscale menus, though it's also clear that fast food and cheap foods lead not only to a rapid increase in weight but also to further compounding it with bad health and disease.

The idea that this is strictly an American problem is obviously silly, as everyone seems ready to catch up to the rate of fatization. America's infrastructure, which once made it so easy to navigate via car or train, is really working against it healthwise... but everyone else, as sheer force of efficency, is having to make similar cuts. Less walking or biking means more weight, and increased stress means more weight, and increased indoor activity generally means more weight. It's really a problem of modern society in general.

[Cairber]

I just got back from walking with the kids. I know this is the USA, but I thought this story would fit well in this thread. I saw a kid playing basketball...he was extremely overweight and about 7 or 8 years old. The basketball net had some contraption hooked under the net that allowed the ball to just come back to the kid when he got a basket. So he was standing still and playing basketball...

I get that the thing could be useful for practice or whatever, but that kid needed to be running around chasing the ball!!

[Aaron]

I was told that the previous Harris government in Ontario brought in a mandatory plan in schools where each class had to have two 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Yet everytime I go to the school to pick up my son I see the classes in the field and half the class is dicking around on the sidelines and the rest is fucking around doing nothing while two or three kids play the sport. Obviously the teachers are doing nothing to engage the kids in the activity.

Now this isn't meant to replace proper nutrition or activity at home by the parents which is the real battle but the teachers could at least put a little effort in.

[Cairber]

Yet everytime I go to the school to pick up my son I see the classes in the field and half the class is dicking around on the sidelines and the rest is fucking around doing nothing while two or three kids play the sport.

That's kinda like the basketball contraption. It seems that we are getting outside more but still not getting the whole point.

When I take my kids to the park and they spend 30 min on the swing with me pushing them, I don't kid myself that they have gotten their exercise for the day

[Aaron]

That's kinda like the basketball contraption. It seems that we are getting outside more but still not getting the whole point.

I know what you mean. Last time I saw them playing cricket. Why don't they try dodgeball or soccer? Sports where you run around more.

When I take my kids to the park and they spend 30 min on the swing with me pushing them, I don't kid myself that they have gotten their exercise for the day

Definetly We usually let them ride their bikes in the driveway or run around in the yard. But we also don't go to Wendy's or McDonalds anymore.

[Count Dooku]

I live in a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm not kidding when I say that I see a lot of very chubby kids. I mean kids who are in grades 1-5. They aren't even teenagers yet!

[Darth Wong]

Yet everytime I go to the school to pick up my son I see the classes in the field and half the class is dicking around on the sidelines and the rest is fucking around doing nothing while two or three kids play the sport.

That's kinda like the basketball contraption. It seems that we are getting outside more but still not getting the whole point.

Here's a fun experiment: go to a health club which doesn't have a very good parking lot. Watch the people jockeying to park their SUVs in the spot closest to the door, so they can have a really short walk inside ... where they will walk on a treadmill for an hour.

[wilfulton]

Here's a fun experiment: go to a health club which doesn't have a very good parking lot. Watch the people jockeying to park their SUVs in the spot closest to the door, so they can have a really short walk inside ... where they will walk on a treadmill for an hour.

Yup. My favorite is watching people getting into their cars to drive less than a quarter of a mile to the gym. Or in my current situation, about one block to the other building. I watch six guys climb into six cars and drive for a block. Naturally, since I'm afoot, I'm going a lot slower, but mysteriously, I sometimes get to the other place first.

At the same time I burn off a few extra carbs and save oil, seems like a win-win situation. I sometimes wonder why I'm the only one that catches on, considering that these are the SAME people who complain about the price of gas in the first place!


As for choice of sports, I recommend soccer, or something that doesn't have you running on a solid surface. True soccer players can hurt their knees quite badly (usually I gather from kicking the ball at odd angles versus straight on) but running on asphalt and concrete is very hard on joints.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

When I take my kids to the park and they spend 30 min on the swing with me pushing them, I don't kid myself that they have gotten their exercise for the day.

But you got some exercise, and you were being a positive role model for your kids. The problem with today's obesity epidemic is the lack of parental role models (both for exercising and eating right). As your kids get older, they will play on the other structures in the playground provided you continue this.

With my own kids, they both plumped out around age 2, but as they got big enough to climb on the play structures, they slimmed down pretty quick. My wife makes a point of letting them play at the school playground for 30-60 minutes after school each day (weather permitting). They get exercise. They get to play with other neighbourhood kids. And they burn off energy (if they don't, they're far less cooperative at home). Neither of them are plump, but they are both solidly built and very active.

[Lord Poe]

I'm pretty alarmed at how my sister lets my 3 year old nephew eat. He's a chubby little guy already, but even I can see he eats too much. Every time he comes for a visit, I beg her to monitor his eating so he won't turn out like me.

[Admiral Valdemar]

This generation is the first one to be truly less well off health-wise than the preceding one, or so they say. I find that in itself quite worrying.

[Big Orange]

Common sense - eat less, but excercise more. I don't see the point of owning a car when I can walk or take public transport to most places - changing my diet slightly and taking ten mile walks two or three times a day prevented me from getting extremely obese (now I'm merely mildly overweight and heading towards being slim).

[Admiral Drason]

I work in a grocery store and its absolutly crazy seeing kids who are ten years old and weigh 20 to 30 pounds more than me. I'm pretty small but still I should still out mass these kids for a few more years.

[Darth Wong]

Common sense - eat less, but excercise more. I don't see the point of owning a car when I can walk or take public transport to most places - changing my diet slightly and taking ten mile walks two or three times a day prevented me from getting extremely obese (now I'm merely mildly overweight and heading towards being slim).

No, the real lesson is to simply eat less, and get normal activity. If the maintenance of normal weight requires walking 20 or 30 miles every goddamned day, you're only setting yourself up for real problems down the road. What happens when you have two kids and you have to choose between your 20 or 30 miles of daily walks and spending time with them? Drag them along with you in a stroller? Change them in the park when their diapers are full? When they get older tell them to bring their homework along with you and try to do it on a clipboard while you walk together? No, you'll stay home with them, skip the walk, and get fat. Either that, or you'll say "fuck you kids, I have to do this for me", like far too many narcissistic shithead parents I've seen.

Do not eat so much food that you need to walk 20 or 30 miles every day to work it off.