On What Our Children Are Telling Us ~ the Government's report on tackling childhood obesity

Foodbank collection at All Souls', Cheriton's Harvest Festival, October 2019

I have decided to post a few pieces here that, like my article on Operation Christmas Child last week, contain my immediate reaction to happenings that mean a lot to me. They might be shorter than my usual sharings, less polished, and I'm sure not entirely complete ~ there is always more to say ~ but sometimes it feels important to say something, rather than nothing at all. I have quite a long list of beautiful blog posts I would like to share but I am struggling to find the space for writing & so I hope that you will forgive me, dear reader, for these occasional, less perfect, deviations.

Today, I want to write about the Government's strategy on childhood obesity.

When I first read Prof. Dame Sally Davies' ideas about tackling childhood obesity by, for instance, banning food & drink on public transport I was niggled, then I was angry. Now I am enraged.

You can read more about it here.

Whilst I agree with her that company profits are being put before people, & that that must change, there is clear evidence from a range of studies over decades that obesity is now linked to poverty; unlike in the past when the poor were starving & the children of the rich were obese.

These studies, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Wellcome Trust, concluded that the "powerful influence of the obesogenic environment [growing up in an environment that encourages, or at least facilitates, unhealthy eating] has disproportionately affected socioeconomically disadvantaged children", and that policies to prevent childhood obesity have been "ineffectually focused". Naturally when the Mail Online reported on this study in March 2018 they resorted, as ever, to 'victim shaming', suggesting that the report blamed rising childhood obesity on cheap junk food & declining activity levels. This, of course, is an oversimplification and it seems that today's Government report follows the same pattern.

Instead of tinkering around the edges, we must address the deeper issues affecting our children. Instead of reinforcing the age-old stereotype that the 'lower classes' need the kind, paternal hand of the 'upper classes' & Gvt to control ourselves, that we are some how more at the mercy of our baser instincts, maybe some thought needs to go into changing the fact that the well off are now growing 'fat' on the misery of the poor; if not physically then certainly in terms of wealth & power.

I have seen many people today, rightly, rejecting the recommendations in this new report whilst suggesting that parents need to be educated in how to feed their children healthy food, particularly on a budget. Whilst, I agree that we can all learn more about how best to care for our bodies, I reject the insidious and internalised blame masquerading as care which is thinly veiled beneath these, no doubt well meaning, comments.

In feeding ourselves and our children we cannot, and must not, discount the anxiety, lowering of self-esteem, and all-pervading depression, caused by decades of Conservative rule. The people feeding their own children now are the children of the children of Margaret Thatcher's brutal Government. So many of us knew that this would happen, have been screaming it into the wind. And depression spreads like poison in the blood. If adults are desperately unhappy, their children, through no fault of the parent or the child, live in a cloud of despair. Who wouldn't reach for a sugary or buttery treat?

And even without the depression, many parents are forced to take several jobs to make ends meet, working long hours, & so unable to cook for their children, sometimes even then compelled to use foodbanks.

Several years ago I read a horrifying report that food which needed to be cooked was being returned to foodbanks because some couldn't pay their gas/electricity bills & so were unable to cook at all. Whilst I accept that this may not affect large numbers of people (and it should be none at all), how easy would it be to make good & healthy food choices whilst living like that? And, of course, working long hours makes us desperately tired and more likely to reach for the quick energy-hit of sugar.

And then there is our disconnection from the outdoors, an issue which disproportionately affects children from low income and BAME households; so many playing fields sold off & built on, so much woodland and other open space lost to development in the name of greed. And we are encouraged not to care, to self-medicate with television and cheap snacks  ~ and, by the way, making the cheap snacks more expensive, as suggested in this report, only makes people poorer. There is no suggestion that healthy food should be made cheaper! ~ And, of course, even if children do have open spaces around them, their parents are often too tired or despairing, or just too busy working, to take them out, and we are so threaded through with fear by the media that many children never go out alone. 

And that disconnection; the loss of even wanting to be out, or being too afraid, of being tied to computer screens & televisions, of not knowing about the world of wonder, & messiness, & play to be found outside. I weep for our children and for all the 'Lost Words', whose loss has lessened the wonder.

I have worked as a counsellor with primary school children, mostly boys and mostly from poor families. They aren't lazy. They don't want to live on snacks. What they mostly want to do is play football or just run about. Instead, we make them sit still in classrooms, putting more and more pressure on them younger and younger to perform, to succeed, but only to succeed within the narrow parameters we have chosen for them to be of use in the world of work. No wonder that they eat.

This is the world that we have made. Looking at the most shallow level ~ the symptom, not the cure ~ won't mend it. We have to start thinking of ourselves, both as individuals & our society, as an ecosystem, a web of interconnections & relationships, & our ecosystem is dying. Our children are telling us that. It's up to us to make the system healthy again; but not with rules & petty blame, but with care, intelligence, and love.

And I am still in a rage. We all should be. How dare they talk about our children in this way!?

References:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/time-to-solve-childhood-obesity-cmo-special-report

https://theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/10/childrens-health-england-must-be-put-ahead-of-profits-says-chief-medic

https://www.nhs.uk/news/obesity/children-poorer-backgrounds-more-affected-rise-childhood-obesity/

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/mar/01/improving-childrens-access-nature-addressing-inequality-bame-low-income-backgrounds

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/21/how-can-we-get-our-children-playing-outside-again

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words

https://heated.medium.com/weve-sold-the-definition-of-food-42062e6c4a14