I don't know about cruel. We didn't eat the best food growing up, but it wasn't out of laziness or choice. It was out of both parents working and often not having the time or the budget for much more than a big pot of macaroni and cheese.

I will grant, though, that a lot of parents could stand to learn to say no to their spawn's demands for fizzy corn syrup water.

Good thing those fattening foods are subsidized!

As a former fat kid, I back this up 100%. I never got picked for teams on games, was constantly mocked by the other kids and even by random people on the street. After a while, you get so sick of the asshole comments that you don't want to go outside and get hurt anymore. I'm now 27, and for the first time in my life starting to take a positive look at my own body, but I still don't feel comfortable wearing tee shirts and such.

…'scuse me, writing this between sets of push-ups…

it says "early feeding errors are crucial" but it doesn't even attempt to describe what those errors are. wtf are you supposed to feed little kids anyway? don't they all eat mushy vegetables and then mac and cheese?

I wouldn't say "lazy" and "cruel" so much as ignorant and/or poor.

At McDonalds you feed a family of 4 for $10-$12. That's tough to do at Whole Foods.

Also, not everyone understands the problems with high fructose corn syrup, or realizes that the stuff is pretty much everywhere.

Not really tough. Bag of rice, fresh vegetables, maybe some chicken, spices. Something along those lines is good enough for 90% of the non-Americans and non-Europeans of the world, it ought to be good enough for us. However, it is more work, and with both parents working (or with a single parent, as in my case), they're generally too exhausted to come back and fix nutritious food all of the time.

High fructose corn sugar is hardly the problem. Sugar is the problem. HFCS just happens to be the cheapest sugar so that's what you see everywhere.
I agree the real problem is probably ignorance. People don't realize that simple carbs ARE sugar.
And yes. You can most definitely feed a family of four for ten bucks at whole foods. But its going to take planning, for which most people are unwilling to put forth the effort.

@4
Yes on the mac and cheese, but my kids actually love fruits and vegetables. The only thing we sometimes have trouble with is getting them to eat meat for iron and protein.

As someone who ate the standard shitty diet of a kid growing up middle class in the 70s/80s, I never would have thought it possible, but kids can definitely be conditioned to eat good foods. Of course, our grocery bills are probably 5 times higher than those of my parents back then.

American social class and food and body image and conspicuous consumption and envy and shame and media saturation. Tangled web. Ugh.

@7: High fructose corn sugar is hardly the problem. Sugar is the problem.

Umm, no. It's well established that the metabolic impact of HFCS is much more problematic than that of natural sugar.

@9
…and yet we're only deceiving ourselves.

"…just a little more and I'll be happy. Am I happy yet? No? I must not've bought/eaten/entertained myself/X enough.

Okay, let's say that's true. But where does it get you? The problem with that distiction is that it makes sucrose sound better than HFCS. Kids need to learn to limit all sugars. If a person is truly eating a reasonable amout of all types of sugar, the metabolic distinction between sucrose and HFCS is null.

@6 ...a grocery store, a stove/oven, more than an hour of time to wait for a meal, a refrigerator to store leftovers in. You sound just like the Reagan-era crowd that equated poverty with stupidity.

@11, and if we spend enough time zooming around that mental loop you describe, we become risk-averse and touchy. We lash out at things that can't be reduced to binary meanings, and have trouble forming meaningful ties with people and ideas that exist outside the hive mind. Spend long enough in there while you're developing your mental powers and there's little chance you can escape without the kind of effort that may already be beyond you.

Or that's what my analyst says, anyhoo. Now I need to hum "Love Cats" all day to cheer up.

I wouldn't say cruel. Do you know what a relief Spam was for my grandmother? Processed food cut down the work she had to do around the house by probably a third. We only just seem to be realizing that food with high sugar, high fructose corn syrup, high sodium, and preservatives might just be killing us. Now we have to decide what balance between unhealthy/easy and healthy/difficult we want to strike. Keep parents informed, and if they still give their kids Totinos Pizza Rolls whenever the kids want, then it might be cruel.

When I was a fat kid, I ate what my parents ate (high fat, high protein) but the strenuous levels of exercise they used to keep fit were really difficult, painful, and stressful for me.

We all had all the knowledge and means to keep me from gaining weight, but in a family discussions of diet and exercise often rub people the wrong way. As soon as I was able to control my own diet--and as soon as I wasn't using food as stress relief or to rebel--the weight dropped off.

The idea that obesity leads to inactivity makes a lot of sense when I think back to my own childhood. I played a number of sports growing up, and I remember that the really fat kids either a) didn't play sports, or b) hardly got any playing time from the coaches because they were slow. On top of all that, they faced merciless teasing and taunting from the other kids, and no one really did anything to stop that.

My wife works with kids, and sees lots of wimpy parents who give in to little Johnny's every craving for soda/McDonald's/etc. I have sympathy for single parents, parents who work difficult hours and parents who are impoverished, but the wimpy parents who are just afraid to say "no" to their children get no sympathy.

@5: "At McDonalds you feed a family of 4 for $10-$12."

Seriously? How? I mean, sincerely. The McDonald's in Toronto are definitely not cheap enough -- not even off the value menu, unless Mom and Dad get one dinky micro-burger each for dinner.

@13: I think the problem is when we're talking about families, we're all talking about a huge range of types. Some people know better but don't have any resources; others have knowledge and money but no time; others have none of those things; some have it all but still don't care.

A lot of families who have perfectly functional fridges and stoves still rarely cook, or cook very bad food. We're talking about them too, not just the extremely impoverished.

In this day and age with information easily available, it astounds me how ignorant people are.

http://www.fox13now.com/health/kstu-calo…

And why do people keep ahold of the idea that decent food is more expensive than crappy prepared food? More ignorance I suppose..... It clearly is not more expensive to cook your own healthful food.

@19 - yup, I find it way cheaper to cook my own food. And with the drive time and wait time, we often find it quicker to eat at home than to eat at BK, Taco Bell, etc., especially for lunch where it takes ten minutes to make a sandwich. Crock Pots and microwaves do much to save time making dinner. Even when I cook on the stove top, it's often only 20 minutes from fridge to plate.
It probably helps that every member of the house hold can cook - the kids start making sandwiches at age 5 or so and stove top cooking at 10.
One thing that can save quite a bit of money eating out, and cut on calories is to cut out the soda and just get water. Once you get used to drinking water, soda tastes way too sweet.

Rice and beans is extremely cheap and stores well and is easy to make. Much better than fats food. There is a noticable rise in over weight kids since I was a kid. It's the parentsd fault and I'm sick of people putting the blame on everyone but the parents, as usual. Everything from food (even poor people have access to the internet for research on cheap easy meals, google my friends) to sex education. Take some responsibility parents! My mother fed us just fine and she was a single disabled mother! Seriously...

Surprise! Lazy, tricked americans are lazy!

Kids can be broken down into two groups, The ones with parents who worked with them, cared for them, took a vested and active interest. Then there are the ones who let it skate by, or neglected, or just had good intentions without action.

Good kids, Bad kids, Good parents, Bad parents.

@12 is correct. The problem isn't mac'n'cheese. The problem is sugar, for one, and sheer quantity for two. A little junk food isn't going to hurt a kid; but a steady diet of as much as the little bugger can cram in there is. And 128-ounce sodas all day long.

But don't worry, it's not just you. Every non-African country in the world is having an obesity epidemic. The US isn't even at the top. The fattest countries in the world are all in the south Pacific, Nauru and Tonga and the Cook Islands and so on. But even countries you'd never associate in your mind with obesity, like Australia, Greece, and France. Even in China and India, obesity rates are skyrocketing.

"It's the parents who are lazy. And, arguably, cruel."

...or, often, just poor. Time-poor and knowledge-poor as well as money-poor.

Think about it: if you don't have a basic understanding of nutrition or personal finance - and most people graduating from public schools in the US won't - what's going to seem right to you, feeding your kid a plain, boring bowl of beans and rice and maybe some broccoli, or buying a full meal from McDonalds? Which one is going to reward you with a happy child, at least in the immediate, visible future?

And if you're working full-time or overtime, which one is going to bring you the deeply unwanted headache of cranky children who don't want to eat what you give them? They see tantalizing hamburgers and sugary breakfast cereals and candy on TV, and you're going to give them... what? Rice? Beans? No way. It's crying time, and that shit will wear you down no matter how much you want to be a good parent.

The problem's systemic. Sure, there are lazy, neglectful parents, but do you really think that somehow human nature has changed so much that now most parents are lazy and neglectful? I don't think that's the root of the problem.

23: Mac n cheese IS sugar. Unless you go run a marathon within 36 hours, your body processes the carbohydrates in pasta just like sucrose.

I have the hardest time hammering this into peoples heads.

And, arguably, cruel.

Yes, that is arguable.

The real problem is this: Parents that don't want to try a few times to get a kid to eat a new food.
Quote from the USDA: "Try and try again. Many kids need to try a new food 5 to 10 times before they like it. It’s normal for kids to be cautious at first."
My parents were completely guilty of this. They would try once, I would whine about it, and then automatically get a familiar pb&j. Make your kids eat what is served. If they don't wanna eat it, let them go hungry. If you continually give in everytime they whine about a food they will only eat a few familiar things - like mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and crap foods with no nutritional value AND be close minded about trying new foods.

@25

The problem with sugar isn't intrinsic to sugar, and you're being pedantic. The problem is that refined sugars make it too easy to cram a whole lot of calories - and very little else of nutritional value - into almost anything, especially beverages and "snacks."

Yes, everything we eat that's destined for use as energy is broken down into some sort of sugar during digestion. Congratulations on your high school diploma. Now stop nitpicking and pay attention to the context of the discussion.

"The paper, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, suggests that overweight children may think about their body negatively, shying away from sports and exercise as a result."

Is this really news? No shit. I'm pretty sure the Disney Channel already had this figured out, we didn't need experts to realize it.

@ 25, mac n cheese is complex carbohydrates. Sugar is not a complex carbohydrate.

Your starting to sound like one of those Atkins boosters. Nutritionists have long shown that around 65% of your daily calorie intake has to come from carbs.

The obesity epidemic has LOTS of sources, not just sugars. Subsidized crops have led to a glut of food being produced. There's a theory (can't remember what it's called) that states that an excess of biomass (like food) WILL be consumed anyway, and that is manifesting itself in ever increasing food portions. Remember when 16 oz. soft drinks were "large" at fast food places? And the quarter pounder was considered "big?" Large portions of food - whether it's truly "all natural" and healthy or (far more often) laden with HCFS and other highly processed ingredients that humans never consumed in the past - has become the norm because we produce TOO MUCH FOOD in this country. And because millions of years of struggling to feed ourselves has programmed us to eat our fill whenever the opportunity arises, we now do so all the time because there's always tons of cheap food there to eat.

Btw, it's been shown that even small amounts of HCFS is likely to lead to weight gain, and that the exact same amount of sugar does not.

18: go try and get fat eating only vegetables.

#27--"Make your kids eat what is served. If they don't wanna eat it, let them go hungry."

Made me think of this Louis CK bit. (I found this, so don't hold me responsible for the poor edit at the beginning at the end of the clip. You'll get the part that I'm thinking about though)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhC6NSlD…

@31,

Go try and *survive* eating only vegetables.

My minimum wage-making, exhausted single mother still fed me real food every night. There was no soda in the house(unless I bought it with my allowance), and as soon as I was about 7, she had me invoved in meal prep - kids are a lot more likely to eat something if they helped make it. She didn't have a degree in nutrition, just some freaking common sense. I am sick of hearing that being poor is some kind of excuse. Y'know where that extra time REALLY goes? Watching TV. If you have time to watch 2 or 3 shows every night, you had time to make your kid(s) real food. Turn off the damn box, people.

Little knowledge about HFCS.

Since HFCS is a blend of glucose and fructose, it’s important to understand the role each plays in your body. All sugars, indeed all carbohydrates, have four calories per gram.

But that is just part of the story.

Glucose (dextrose) is a monosaccharide (basically, a simple sugar), which is the form of sugar that is transported in the blood and is used by the body for energy. This is what you measure when testing your blood glucose or blood “sugar.”

Fructose is also a monosaccharide and is often referred to as “fruit sugar,” because it is the primary carbohydrate in most fruits. It’s also the primary sugar in honey and half the carbohydrate in sucrose (table sugar). However, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or require insulin to be transported into cells, as do other carbohydrates. As a person with diabetes, you know how important it is to control your blood glucose and insulin levels to avoid complications. So, it would seem that a lack of glucose and insulin secretion from fructose consumption would be a good thing.

However, insulin also controls another hormone, leptin, so its release is necessary.

Leptin tells your body to stop eating when it’s full by signaling the brain to stop sending hunger signals. Since fructose doesn’t stimulate glucose levels and insulin release, there’s no increase in leptin levels or feeling of satiety. This can leave you ripe for unhealthy weight gain.Fructose requires a different metabolic pathway than other carbohydrates because it basically skips glycolysis (normal carbohydrate metabolism). Because of this, fructose is an unregulated source of “acetyl CoA,” or the starting material for fatty acid synthesis. This, coupled with unstimulated leptin levels, is like opening the flood gates of fat deposition.

We grew up lower-working class in the 70s-80s and ate very well, even in a single parent family. Here's how: my dad, my uncle and my grandpa hunted and fished. My grandmothers had small but productive gardens and canned like mad. We took advantage of coupons and sales and had an old extra freezer in the garage. We bought eggs and milk from local farmers and eventually they were happy to trade fish or duck or jam with us. We picked berries. Pretty much the only processed food we ate, we processed ourselves. It did take work, but it was mostly seasonal and we saved the effort of who knows how many grocery store trips. My grandparents lived into their 90's, fit as fiddles, and I have never been anywhere near obese. I do the same things with my kids (minus the hunting) and they are lean, strong and love veggies! Well, most of the time ;-)

I know this isn't possible for everyone, but it could be if people would just freaking HELP each other. If you have room for a garden, why not let some friends help you cultivate it and share the proceeds? If you have a boat, take some kids fishing. We live in a great part of the world and (especially this time of year) NO ONE needs to eat big agro's CRAP.

If everyone just was like me and my family and with my genetics and life experiences and economic privilege, we'd all be skinny! It's just so simple!

It's not simply a matter of sugar vs. exercise. It's becoming clear that artificial estrogens in the diet (from plastics and fertilizers) also have a hand in causing obesity. These are molecules, often synthetic, that the body confuses for estrogens and they are everywhere these days. They interact with the endocrine system and in many people cause them to store much more fat than they would normally (think how some women gain weight during their periods or on birth control and then magnify the effects for smaller kids' bodies). So it's not just the sugars in the cheap foods and in the sodas. It's also about plastic packaging, coatings on aluminum cans, plastic plates and cups in the home, and even some fresh produce! This has to enter the discussion because causing people lazy and stupid for their food choices -- while ignoring what the food is packaged in and treated with -- isn't helping anything and is just making people give up hope.

Actually, a little virtue in cooking can go a long way; simple (and not so simple) knowledge about cooking can allow a burgeoning dinner provider go a long way with relatively cheap foods. For instance, if one is familiar with how to de-bone a chicken, one can put together, on the cheap, a very effective stuffed chicken (typically with sausage, spinach, etc). I have noticed that most Americans at least attempting to provide decent food still lack any knowledge or wisdom in the practice of cooking, and thus limit themselves to the aforementioned "rice and beans."

The most flavorful cuts of beef are often among the most cheap, but many people will never put in the effort into a decent beef stew (or even a simple grilled, marinated chuck-steak), and the skills required to produce these sorts of dishes are honestly very meager.

Much of the Italian canon of cooking is in very elegant, but simple food, just for example.