We have all seen TV footage which normally accompanies the “childhood obesity epidemic” stories. Strangely headless muffin-topped children’s bodies in oversized t-shirts, digging into a packet of chips or clutching an ice-cream, filmed walking out of a fast-food joint with their obese parents. You’ve all seen it, right? This picture is remarkably divisive: some of us come pouring out with indignant accusations (“child abuse”, etc), some shrug off the criticism recognising themselves or friends. Dismissing the unlikely scenario that the parents of the 25% of overweight and obese children in Australia really don’t give a toss about their offspring (let’s work on the assumption that most people love their kids) what do we do?
Whether you are a parent or plan to become one some day you might feel legitimately concerned about how to keep your child out of similar news footage.
You might want to do what any responsible parent would do to find information: google it. A cursory search for “healthy eating for children” has yielded a staggering 19 500 000 results. So far so good: almost 20 million ways to avoid being a weight statistic. Encouraging to see so many experts.
