Obesity

So one of my biggest issues at the moment is obesity in children. In the last few weeks I have come across several very obese children on the ward. I personally feel that if an adult wants to be obese, fine they can make that choice for themselves but they should not be making it for their children.

Obesity is such a well publicised issue along with healthy eating that parents can no longer plead ignorance. But what motivates a parent to over feed and poorly feed their child to the point of obesisty? And I'm not talking a little bit chubby, I am talking clinically obese. For example, a 15 year old, 1.5m tall weighing in at 110kg. A 5 year old, 45kg (yes he was tall for his age, but he wasn't *that* tall). This 5 year was due to have minor surgery, the anaethetist was talking of cancelling the operation because obtaining venous access was very difficult due to his excess fat. Fortunatly venous access was obtained and the operation went ahead. I wonder though if the cancellation would have "taught the parents a lesson"? It's not about punishment and unfortunatly it would result in the child's care suffering but clearly the parents are not paying attention to their child's health needs and what will it take for them to realise it is a problem? They obviously didn't feel it was a problem; the 2 McDonalds, a packet of crisps and a packet of maltesers the night before clearly indicated this, as did the claim that they didn't feel he ate very much.

The child's diet and weight bordered on being neglectful or abusive as my collegaues have suggested, but these were clearly very loving parents, they just wanted to make their child happy. I think something has gone very wrong in our society, material things and food are all too often used as demonstrations of affection. I regularly see it in my work, parents not knowing any other way to show thier child love other than by buying them things and giving into their every whim whether it's good for their health or not. I wonder if they truly realise the damage they're doing to their children.

I'm trying not to jump on the obesity band wagon, but I've recently realised what an issue it's becoming and it is a difficult one to address. In many cases I think it is the result of parenting that the child has become obese and it's difficult to tackle as not all parents are compliant. I also feel that at times there is a hesitency to raise the issue on the part of healthcare staff; being fat has very negative connotations in this society and it's hard to turn round to a parent and tell them not only is their child fat (we try to come up with nice words for it) but that it's their responsibility - no parent likes to be criticised. It's an issue that needs to be dealt with very sensitively and it is easy to criticise, as I'm sure you've realised through reading this. I'm not sure what the answer is but I think we need to provide education for these parents, hard facts about what the consequences of childhood obesity are, but also a supportive and nurturing environment to help them to change their child's lifestyle.

I added some new links, for those of you interested in what we're doing in Iraq there's a site that attempts to keep a record of the casualitise to date. I've also added links to 3 blogs which I'm following with interest, I hope I've not broken any Blogging etiquette in linking.