... "As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. ..."
Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?
As a parent myself, I know how damn hard it is for kids to eat anything consistently, especially "healthy" foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. And our kids have snacks in moderation.
It seems to me that if parents were more "responsible", which is a horribly generalized term, then the food executives wouldn't have private meetings to discuss how to deal with obesity - their products would have adapted to the healthy market.
Parenting is hard. Being a "responsible" parent is harder. Tough shit.
I've not found it difficult to get my kids (2 teenage daughters) to consistently eat healthy foods. Hell, we can't keep fresh fruits and vegetables in the house. A one pound bag of baby carrots lasts about a week, one pound bunch of bananas: about 3 days, a pint of blue berries: About an hour (blue berries never last long at our house). The list goes on, but that's not the point.
I don't think it's really a responsibility thing. I don't know any parent that _want_ their kids eating junk, but fresh fruit and vegetables are actually quite expensive and far more difficult to keep than your average junk snack. That's the hard part: justifying the higher cost and spoilage when you're just barely making the bills.
Most of my childhood was spent right at the government assistance threshold. During the down times, our health increased, and our dit included more fresh fruit and vegetables. During the times above that line, with no assistance, the high cost of fresh produce meant meant that it wasn't around.
So, to answer your question, "Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?" Because they can't afford to be. Though there are many factors that contribute to the obesity problem, claiming it's poor parental responsibility is a useless over-simplification.
Btw, I've been parenting for 18 years now. When is it supposed to get hard?
I've two teenage kids albeit a little younger than yours.
I found one way to hack their stomach share is to stick cut fruits/carrots on the table when they're doing homework. Another technique is to introduce subtle variety into the shapes, kind of like how pop songs have the same tune but a lot of work goes into varying the accompaniment. With carrots, give them a mix varying thickness, length, tapers etc. Observe how they eat. They'll start to play with the shapes etc.
Since you have daughters and they'd listen if you knew something tricks that'd help with weight. Talk to them about set points.
The level of sugar, salt and fat we prefer depend on what our "set point" is. A set point is like a thermostat. It determines what we feel is comfortable or not.
If you go to developing countries, you will find cakes and biscuits that are very plain tasting. It isn't because they don't know how to make cakes and biscuits. It is because the people have a different preferred set point. If you serve them typical American desert, they will actually react in disgust because it is overpowering.
The same with soft drinks. A person who consumes soft drinks regularly raise their set point for sugars. To the extent they will no longer drink plain water. One only has to look around at their friends to realize this is going on.
The trick though, is this - the set point can be altered. There are two parts to this - water, and attention.
Drinking plain water regularly will, after six to 12 months, increase your preference for water. It will also alter your set point that after a while, you will find rich foods a little too rich for your liking. Going cold turkey for two weeks can be very helpful when starting out. Initially, water will taste disgusting. But your ancestors have been drinking water for millennias. Put up with it for a while and your set point has to be down-regulated. I personally know of someone who lost 15 kgs from just changing their water-drinking habit alone.
Paying attention is another method. One of the common problems is food manufacturers have flavored their food to suit inattentive eating. Paying attention to the sugars in your foods will cause you to notice how overpowering it is. The same with salt.
>>It is because the people have a different preferred set point. If you serve them typical American desert, they will actually react in disgust because it is overpowering.
As a Indian I realize how true this is. People from my workplace generally bring chocolates when they come back from the US work assignment. I find it strange that chocolates are so cheap and easily accessible in the US.
I find that as an over dose of sugar. I mean one chocolate down and I don't feel like I need sugar for the next 2 days. That is how much I feel full and yet I see kids in US munching them all the time.
... fresh fruit and vegetables are actually quite expensive and far more difficult to keep than your average junk snack.
Great points - and, besides the expense, even having access to fresh fruits and vegetables can be difficult for some.
Unfortunately, I over-simplified my view, but parents are a huge influence in their kid's behavior and choices. And the analysis of a market changing to be more healthy is not new - Frontline investigated this several years ago:
"The investment analyses -- and there have now been three of them that I'm aware of: one from UBS Warburg, and J.P. Morgan in Great Britain, and another from Morgan Stanley in the United States -- all three of them say the same thing, that if people start losing weight, they're going to have to be eating less. Eating less is going to be bad for business, and it's going to be much worse for some businesses than others, so that if these food companies don't fix their product mixes to make healthier food products, and market them in a way that emphasizes the healthfulness of food products, especially those that are lower in calories, they're going to be left behind in this mass movement towards more healthful eating."[1]
Because they spend 50% of their waking hours in school where it is impossible to monitor exactly what they're eating. Parents do take responsibility for what their kids eat at home. The alarm comes from schools marketing unhealthful food to them when we can't be there to ensure they make good choices.
You could lobby the school to make sure there are NO "snacks" available, anywhere, anytime, ever.
I don't know how it works in the US but here in France if there were vendor machines in the schools where my kids go to, or if they were served hamburgers or fries at lunch, I would be up in arms, and eventually I would take them to another school (they're in a normal state-run school BTW, not a fancy private school).
My kids drink only water, at home... or in school!
It may be impossible to monitor what our kids eat during the day, but it's certainly possible to make sure schools don't feed them junk food just because it's more convenient.
Also, I don't think it's up to (young) kids to "make choices", good or bad. We make choices for them (we being parents and tutors). Schools should ONLY offer healthy food, and nothing else.
That's what schools are for: educate.
Offering a mix of healthy and unhealthy food for kids to choose is like teaching maths by offering either to watch TV or practice math problems, and expecting kids to not choose TV.
I think this is starting to change, slowly, but many schools do/used to get kickbacks from snack vendors in exchange for placing their products in vending machines in the school.
"Oh, you need new uniforms for the basketball team? We can help you with that. Just put our machine in the hallway, and our logo on the scoreboard." This is not hypothetical; this is how things were run when I was in school.
That's quite the red herring. The same argument could be applied regarding children smoking cigarettes, but I presume* that you don't think that the doors should be thrown wide open to kid-focused tobacco advertising because parents should be "more responsible for their children's health".
You do realize that you're saying "tough shit" to the children too, right? You know, those whose outcomes are the whole point of these discussions? They're ultimately the ones who have to deal with the consequences the most, and for some reason dismissing their stake in this with "you should have thought about that before you decided to have irresponsible parents" doesn't seem to hold much water.
Note that I'm not making a point for or against regulation of advertising unhealthy foods to children, but dismissing the comparison to tobacco with "parents should be responsible" is beyond silly.
*If my assumption is wrong and you are actually in favor of completely allowing the advertisement of tobacco to kids, then never mind, disregard this comment.
Look's like I'm having humble pie for dinner tonight ... hopefully Swanson's.
Our poll used a unique design to get at what is actually happening in the life of a "target child" in each household. We supplemented their responses with more than 800 that came in when we asked parents, through NPR's Facebook page, to describe their own "crunch times."
The most striking finding is that U.S. parents "get it."
When we asked a parent or other principal caregiver in our poll how important it is that their child eats and exercises in a way to maintain a healthy weight, more than 9 in 10 said it was important — and most said it was "very important."
But all too often, there's a disconnect. Despite good intentions, it's not happening. [1]
None of this stops us restricting cigarettes to adults only and banning smoking in school, and it shouldn't stop us placing the same restrictions on junk food.
No, it shouldn't stop the regulation of "junk food", but some parents will say, "Why are you telling me I cannot feed my family this?", and food companies will obviously complain as well.
In my opinion (as a casual observer), the regulation of "junk food" will be nearly impossible.
And my answer to that would be, "I'm not telling you you can't let your children eat junk food at home, any more than I'm telling you you can't let your children smoke at home. I'm just saying I don't want your children doing either of those things at school, because I don't want other children to have to deal with a social environment where those things are regarded as normal behavior."
I don't want your children doing either of those things at school, because I don't want other children to have to deal with a social environment where those things are regarded as normal behavior.
This is literally no way in which this could backfire.
I understand the downvotes since I knew my post would be controversial in its unfortunate generalization. Parenting is not easy - and a bunch of hand waving and saying "tough shit" doesn't make it better.
However, parents do have a significant role in the obesity in children. I would like to hear an argument that it's solely the food companies' fault and not the parents. (And please understand that I am not a champion of any sort of these food companies.)
Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?
As a parent myself, I know how damn hard it is for kids to eat anything consistently, especially "healthy" foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. And our kids have snacks in moderation.
It seems to me that if parents were more "responsible", which is a horribly generalized term, then the food executives wouldn't have private meetings to discuss how to deal with obesity - their products would have adapted to the healthy market.
Parenting is hard. Being a "responsible" parent is harder. Tough shit.