Feeding Your Child Badly is Child Abuse: The Easy Way for Children (and Adults) to Lose Weight, and to Protect Them

1: How Much Fatter do we have to get?

In November 2011, The Times Live magazine reported a 9-year-old morbidly obese boy, in Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa, died, in school, of a heart attack; in front of his school-mates. He weighed between 105 and 125 kg (16 to 19 stone; 230 to 275 pounds).

Just what is fat anyway? It is specific cell growth in your body, to store energy, in the event that you have insufficient food to generate enough energy to survive.

Before the manufacturing of food, we grew, picked, or caught our food, and it was seasonal. If weather prevented us from harvesting food, we went hungry if we didn’t have stores, and we lived off our fat reserves. We are programmed to eat now (as soon as possible), in case there is a shortage later; but in the Western World; there is hardly ever shortage, for the vast majority of people.

The vast majority of people in first world countries have no idea what it is to be hungry.

When is a child considered fat; overweight; obese? At what stage of fatness, do we call a child fat? How much fat does a child have to carry, before we consider he or she is unhealthy? Is it when they are overweight, very overweight, obese, or morbidly obese? There is a simple test we can do to measure excess fat: THE PINCH TEST.

The most dangerous place for your health, to carry excess fat, is around the middle of your body. When you are fat around the waist, you are putting your internal organs at strain and at risk. Not everyone realises that when we get fatter on the outside, we also get fatter on the inside, putting pressure on our body internally. If you can pinch more than an inch (25mm) of skin between your thumb and forefinger, you are overweight by some degree or another, putting strain on your organs and your body.

These are my sons, Max (15) and Cooper (13), doing a pinch test. This is a healthy amount of fat to be carrying on a body.

When we are in fast growing stage, as children, we convert our extra energy from food, into growth; so we can ‘get away’ with over-eating to a certain extent, as the energy is converted into growing. When we reach adulthood, that growing slows down, and any excess energy that would have been used for growth; we convert into fat, or if we exercise, sometimes into muscle mass. So consider this: If a child is getting fatter, the child is consuming significantly more of the wrong food or quantity of food, or both, to enable the energy to be in excess of the growth.

We can kid ourselves all day long, that our children have ‘puppy fat’, and convince ourselves that that they are healthy and normal. Normal, most of them are; but healthy, most of them are not. It is normal today to be overweight, but it is not natural and it is not healthy. Sadly, even Doctors now refer to ‘normal’ levels of weight, cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure; and they are normal for our Western so-called civilised population; but it is neither natural nor healthy.

Many of these measures, which supposedly fall into healthy categories, by doctors, are pushing towards being borderline unhealthy. A doctor is happy to get you out of the red zone and into the green zone for blood pressure measurement, but the parameter for that green zone is huge. The doctor, generally, just wants you away from the unhealthy band.

Don’t confuse fitness with health. You can be fit and at the same time, due to what you eat and drink; be unhealthy. You can, on the other hand, be carrying too much fat and run a marathon, but you won’t live long. You can also be lean and fit, but if you eat the wrong kind of food, and don’t get the balance right with the right kind of food, you can still become deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, and be susceptible to cancer.

The life-expectancy of a really fat person, is 50-60 years. So that raises a question. If your child is overweight, are you programming your child for a short life?

Most of us want what’s best for our children. Most of us want our children to have a better life than we parents have had. Most of us want to give our children the best start in life.

We consider, when a child reaches 18 years of age, the child becomes an adult. Until that time, a child is in our care; following in our footsteps.

Some of us may have made some wrong decisions and choices in life, with food, exercise and lifestyle; due to lack of education. And when I say education, I don’t mean because people are stupid or lacking in intelligence.

To put this in perspective, there is a large percentage (in excess of 99%) of doctors, surgeons and nurses, who lack education in diet and nutrition, because they are mainly taught to treat symptoms and not always look for the cause.

If you don’t know what you don’t know; you don’t know what to ask, and you don’t know what to advise.

We are only just really learning, these past few years, the real implications of the effects of manufactured, processed and refined food on our bodies, and the strain that being overweight, or carrying excess fat, puts on our bodies. With the information that is mounting, people need educating about it; and this book is a wake-up call to get people thinking about what they put in their mouths, and more importantly, what their children put in their mouths.

With such easy access to the internet, there are no excuses now, for not educating ourselves about the effects of what we are eating and drinking; how processed and refined food is killing us slowly; and how eating to excess is slowly killing us.

At worst, go out and research and prove me wrong. Prove to me that combinations of refined and processed food are good for your children. Prove to me that excessive eating of meat and dairy; chocolate, sweet and candies, cakes and fizzy drinks; is good for you and your children. Prove to me that it won’t do you or your children any harm.

Now, we need to consider; if you eat a rat, you will get away with it (maybe); but if you eat a rat a day, at some point, you will die. If you drink a 2-litre bottle of fizzy pop (soda) (approx. 70oz) your immune system will cope, but if you drink that every day, you are going to suffer. The acidity of the fluids in your body is going to rise, creating dis-ease in your body.

Anyone can show SOME small benefit from any processed food or drink, but it’s the combination, the amounts, and what is missing from the food; and also what is additional in the food (chemicals and additives), which is slowly shortening our life-spans, giving us chronic diseases, and killing us. It’s always about moderation and balance.

If your child is suffering from allergies or joint problems through being overweight; if your child is being bullied at school for carrying too much fat; tell me it’s not your fault; and that you really believe it’s not because of what YOU feed your child.

Just who do you blame when your child becomes overweight? Do you blame your child? Do you blame the child’s metabolism? Do you blame someone else for feeding your child? Do you blame advertising on TV or billboards? Do you blame fast food?

Or do you say something like this?:-

She’s always been big, from birth.

He’s big-boned.

It’s cruel not to let kids eat sweets (candy).

It’s a hereditary problem, we’re all big in our family.

SOMEONE, is overfeeding a child who is carrying excess fat.

Do you make excuses that your child helps his or herself to food in the house? Then ask yourself, who is putting the food in the house which allows the child to eat excessively?

Do you make excuses that your child buys food outside of the home, such as fish and chips, pizza, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, fries, tacos or burritos? Then ask yourself who is giving them the money. This is a discipline problem.

You can’t expect a child to eat healthily, if your house is full of fattening food and ‘dead’ manufactured, processed and refined food. Remember; you know better about the risks of being overweight, and it is your choice, whether to be a healthy size; or unhealthy, carrying excess fat. A child doesn’t have the same informed choices. Life is about choices for an adult, but much less so, for a child. For adults, all actions are choices.

Let me just elaborate on that. All actions are choices. Whatever excuse you can come up with, is irrelevant. Every action is a choice, other than an unconscious reaction such as eye-blinking. When you have money in your pocket, your food is a choice. The amount you eat, is a choice. No-one is likely to be holding a gun to your head, forcing you to keep eating; and even then, you have the choice to take the bullet. I didn’t write that all the choices are easy or nice, but they are choices.

This next picture is me in 1965. I was 10 years old. Take a good look at this picture. I was in the 4th year in Junior School (now called year-6 today) (6th grade USA). I was the fattest kid in school. I was called fatty. There were around 250 kids in the school; and I was the fattest.

We lived in a Council Estate house in Sheffield, Yorkshire, on an estate called Lowedges. Shortly after this photograph was taken, we moved to more affluent area; Dronfield, Derbyshire.

In my new school at Dronfield, I wasn’t the fat kid anymore; there were people fatter than me. This was a more affluent area than the Council Estate I left; where richer and more plentiful food was more readily available to children I was at school with.

In the few months before I left the old school, I was subjected to a lot of verbal abuse, being called a snob, because of where I was moving to.

Now let’s take a look at some of the kids today (2014):

Is this a typical staged family, in front of a TV, eating junk food? Ask yourself this; would it be the child’s fault, that she is carrying so much fat?

We are the only species on the planet, which eat for pleasure and not just for energy. Our species is strange, in that we only seem to take action against potential harm, when we reach the brink. We ignore the early warning signs of disease creeping up on ourselves, and extinction of our planet, and hope it will go away.

We sit back and tell ourselves we can’t make a difference, and hope someone else will come to the rescue. We allow ourselves to be lied to and deceived, by our leaders and governments, and allow the media to programme us into believing everything is OK.

We watch people litter the planet, with the thought that someone else will clean it up. We walk on by litter, and expect someone else to clean it up, while at the same time we moan that someone has left litter.

We turn a blind eye to the corruptness of some of the food industry, where profit is more important than health.

We allow ourselves to be ignorant of how much of the food industry is irresponsible with chemical additives, preparation and storage of food. We blindly believe that if food sold to us, wasn’t good for us, our governments wouldn’t allow it; if our water isn’t fit for drinking, our governments wouldn’t allow it.

And then there’s the big one: If God didn’t want me to eat or drink this, he surely he wouldn’t have allowed people to make it? If that is your mantra, wake up; we make guns and bombs too. We make chemicals to supposedly cure cancer, but the chemicals used to cure cancer, are destroying the immune system of people, so many people die of diseases (resulting from a shattered immune system) such as flu, bronchitis and other ailments that a good immune system would normally fend off.

We have a major human problem: EGO! People are greedy. Money talks. Food manufacturers are interested in financial gain. People are corrupt. People take bribes. People deceive. People lie. People cheat. And people don’t care about the consequences of other people, as long as it doesn’t affect themselves, their family, and their nearest and dearest.

Let me put that into perspective: Why do we allow a nation to have pandemic obesity problems, when another nation is dying from malnutrition? Out of sight, out of mind?

It doesn’t stop at that. If disease is big business for the pharmaceutical companies, why would they want to stop it? Pharmaceutical companies are some of the most profitable companies in the world. They ‘want’ us to be sick, otherwise they don’t make money and they would cease to trade.

So as the statistics reveal that children are becoming fatter and more ill around the world, the people that run these pharmaceutical companies, probably rub their hands together, and foresee a never-ending supply of income.

It’s June 2013, and we’ve just been made aware in the media, of the latest official National Health Service (NHS) statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet in England.

The data has been compiled by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, and it relates to information gathered during 2011. The statistics show the obesity epidemic in England shows no signs of slowing down or reversing.

These are the main points:

Obesity

The proportion of adults with a healthy body mass index (BMI) – defined as being between 18.5 and 25 – fell to just 34% in men and 39% in women during 2011.

Glenn comments: Now here is where I start to get angry. Someone, somewhere, has decided it’s healthy to have a fat body-percentage of between 18.5 and 25%, with no consideration for whether you are male or female. Women naturally carry more fat to protect their organs. The reality is, it may be ‘normal’ but it’s not natural, and it’s borderline healthy. 25% body fat is still carrying 25% fat; a quarter of your body weight. 15% for a man, and 20% for a woman, is very healthy. When you look at sports athletes who are very healthy, they are often around the 15% (or lower) fat body-percentage mark. So let’s please differentiate between normal for the 21st century and what is really healthy. We were designed to be a thin species. Thin is healthy. Let’s get thinspired!

There has been a marked increase in obesity rates over the past eight years – in 1993, 13% of men and 16% of women were obese – in 2011 this rose to 24% for men and 26% for women.

For children attending reception class (aged 4-5 years) during 2011-12, 9.5% were obese.

Glenn comments: Not just overweight; obese! Obesity is having over 35% of your body as fat. One in every 10 children in the UK is obese.

Health outcomes

In 2011, 53% of obese men and 44% of obese women were found to have high blood pressure.

During 2011-12 there were 11,736 hospital admissions due to obesity – this over 11 times higher than during 2001-02.

Is there any good news?

Well, as bleak as the picture may appear, there are some cautious reasons for optimism that include:

24% of men and 29% of women are regularly consuming their recommended daily five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables – for children, this figure is 16% for boys and 20% for girls.

Glenn comments: This is another angry moment for me. This doesn’t take into account the over-cooked ‘dead’ fresh vegetables, or dead tinned vegetables that have vastly reduced nutrition; nor the blatant miss-use of government guidelines in mis-labelling ‘5-a-day’ on processed food