Fast food chains don’t make your kid fat. You do

DO academics seriously think that making junk food chains sell salad is going to help with our obesity crisis? A child’s diet is a parent’s responsibility, writes Kylie Lang.

DON’T blame fast food chains for making children fat.

How about parents do their job properly, and take responsibility for what their kids put in their mouths?

Expecting burger kings to care about nutrition is as foolish as thinking fuel companies will drop petrol prices because it is the right thing to do.

As new research states the obvious, that profit is the priority for fast food giants, calls are ringing out for salad and water to replace fries and soft drink as the default when ordering burger meals.

Deakin University’s Global Obesity Centre also suggests listing health stars on menu boards, restricting advertising and sponsorships, offering fewer “value deals” and banning toys and game promotions.

And pigs might fly.

Tinkering around the edges has never solved any social problem.

Lasting change requires grassroots reform yet here we are, in 2018, with parents wimping out and letting their children eat whatever they like.

The key to ensuring your kids eat healthy foods is for healthy foods to be given to them at home. Emily 11, Maggie, 5, and Paddy, 9, have the right idea. (Pic: Alex Coppel.

Kids as young as four are going days without eating vegetables, and having jam sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Others are eating fried food three times a day.

Why? Because mums and dads “don’t want to fight with their kids at meal times at the end of a busy day”, paediatric dietitian Miriam Raleigh told The Courier-Mail on the weekend.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I get that conflict at the dinner table might not be pleasant but who is in charge here? Whatever happened to stiff cheese and tough bikkies?

The aim of parenting is not to appease kids or be momentarily “popular”. It is to lay foundations for them to lead healthy and capable lives as independent adults.

And kids who won’t eat vegetables — and certainly won’t ever cook them — will be poorly prepared.

A balanced diet is not just about weight regulation; it also helps with concentration in the classroom, getting a decent sleep at night, and, in some cases, dealing with behavioural disorders that are too quickly controlled with medication.

It is idiotic to expect fast food companies — or any other external party, including school tuckshops — to try to save kids from the unhealthy choices their parents allow or make for them.

Breaking: fast food isn’t good for you.

The diet children eat at home sticks with them, for better or worse.

After reviewing 120 experimental studies on changing children’s eating behaviour, Danish researchers have found that the biggest influence is not school gardens, nutrition programs, cooking shows or even food packaging.

It is what parents put in front of them.

“Children’s eating behaviour is fundamentally governed by what foods are available and accessible to them, and the food made available to them, intentionally or unintentionally, will affect what they eat,” they write in the international research journal Appetite.

Essentially, making vegetables part of the daily routine will “affect long-term eating behaviour”.

This becomes particularly important, the researchers say, when children are faced with a greater array of food choices as they get older.

Those with strong habits of healthy eating are less susceptible to “nudging” (read: ploys to get them to eat junk, whether by peers or profiteers).

Problematically though, today’s kids are profoundly disconnected from nature’s bounty.

Many don’t even know where vegetables come from.

Our children are eating fewer vegetables than ever before, in a downward spiral from 6 per cent 10 years ago to 5 per cent now, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile, the nation’s obesity epidemic is worsening.

One child in four is obese, and fat kids typically become fat adults, with all the social, emotional and health issues this entails.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, costing the economy upwards of $8.6 billion a year.

Go to any public event these days, except perhaps a yoga convention, and the majority of people will be overweight, some morbidly so.

This is not about “fat-shaming” — a term whose very existence indicates that obesity is on track to becoming the new normal — but questioning poor choices.

Deakin University’s Gary Sacks, an authority on obesity, says Australians spend 32 per cent of their food budget on takeaways and eating out, and “unhealthy diets are creating a public health crisis”.

While food retailers and manufacturers have a role to play, as does education, change begins in the home.

Shop carefully and you can get a lot of vegetables for under $10. This week at Coles broccoli is $3 a kilo, pumpkin $2.50 and carrots and potatoes $2. And, as a rule of thumb, if half your plate is vegetables, you’re doing OK.

Parents have to take the lead on childhood obesity and get busy in their own kitchens.

By eating more vegetables themselves, they can model positive behaviour.

Kids may baulk at eating their greens — like that’s something new? — but assisting them in making healthy choices is worth every investment of time and tough love.

Originally published as Fast food chains don’t make your kid fat. You do