Slim Girl Fat?

It had to happen sooner or later!

In an attempt to offer wise counsel to the family of a young girl, the NHS really hit a nerve.

Lucy Davies is a perfectly normal 5 year old who is active, enjoys cheerleading and ballet ... and walks a fair bit. Her parents received a letter from the NHS saying she was overweight.

Officials measured Lucy's height and weight and calculated her body mass index (BMI) fell outside the "normal" parameters for a girl of five ... by 1%! With this limited data, they determined she was unhealthy and at possible risk for heart disease and cancer.

Please!

The Bournemouth and Poole Primary Care Trust (in their infinite wisdom) decided this meant her parents should be appraised of the statistical risks ... by a generic letter generated as a result of flawed assumptions rooted in sheer ignorance.

How considerate! How thoughtful!

And how careless and totally insensitive. How on earth can some pencil pusher not see that sooner or later this was bound to happen? And where was all the discretion and human input in this equation.

Body Mass Index is a guideline, not the word of God!

This is a little girl and her family. They are real, live human beings and they should never, under any circumstances, be exposed to something so short-sighted and uni-dimensional.

Even if she was not "sporty" and did fall outside the "magic" range, why didn't someone contact the family and raise their concerns with a modicum of tact?

If I had no clue about what constitutes a healthy diet (and quite frankly that should apply to the parents of just about every child in the UK, because the experts themselves aren't even clear), I would still be a little defensive if all I got was a robotic, generic form letter that made me feel my kid was defective and that was my fault.

Even if it was couched in formal robot-speak.

I would expect a phone call saying that these were the numbers and maybe it was a good idea if I bought my child in for further evaluation and some good old-fashioned helpful (informed) input so I could put my mind at rest (or at least learn something that could be really beneficial to my child).

How many parents get a letter like this and immediately assume their child must go on diet?

And how healthy is that?

Obesity is a massive problem in the UK, because we have a diet mentality here. The fish stinks from the head. Some genius comes up with these policies (in spite of the known shortfalls and risks of over-relying on limited information).

And all in the name of helping parents who are none-the-wiser.

But then what do we expect from a nucleus of experts who believe that breakfast cereal, milk and yogurt constitute a healthy way to start your day?

Or that "5-a-day" is anywhere near enough, especially in view of what can be counted towards this.

Wake up people. Lives are at stake. These are our kids!

We Are Killing Our Children

There is never a shortage of issues to talk about whenever I watch the news.

Today was no exception. I won't go into the specifics, but the gist of what was being discussed was that charity groups were calling for an extra 3 billion pounds to be spent on feeding low income families.

People were considered vulnerable to rising costs associated with a "typical" basket of 33 goods. But here's where the madness begins. The first 4 items flashed onto the screen were:

- baked beans ... fibre drenched in sugar and artificial chemicals

- pork sausages ... a high fat treat from unhealthy, force-fed pigs

- refined breakfast cereal ... hold on, haven't we been told that's a "health" food?

- pasteurized milk ... raw, organically produced milk from healthy grass-fed cows of course would be too expensive, even if it was available

No doubt, the rest of the basket would have included beauties like chocolate, chips and baked goods ... all guaranteed to flood our systems with refined sugar, hidden salt, hydrogenated fat, stimulants and low fibre, refined carbohydrates.

At what point will someone realize that we are creating a nation of dependant people who are virtually guaranteed to be a huge burden on the NHS by the time they are middle-aged ... because they simply don't know any better?

When will education replace handouts?

And when will just one of these so called nutrition gurus stand up and tell people what they really need to know ... that we're not just over-feeding our kids, we're killing them with shockingly bad food and drink choices.

I walked into a supermarket the other day. There was no bottled water for sale and yet there were aisles and aisles of soft drinks, biscuits, chips, chocolates, booze, TV dinners, processed meats, white bread, exotic cheeses ... and cosmetics!

Turn on the television and any station that shows commercials will be seductively extolling the virtues of chocolate, chips and just about any other processed treat you can think of.

So why do we all wonder why childhood obesity is an issue? Why do we create task forces and recruit high profile chefs, doctors and dieticians to "come to grips" with the problem ... when the problem is absolutely, patently obvious?

No-one is prepared to tell the whole truth, because people just don't want to hear it.