Well said, Senior Victorian!
If you can't be held responsible for the food choices you make, for yourself or for your children, why bother calling yourself an adult at all? Surely there cannot be much else in daily routine that could be more basic.
I'm sure that for very many people, the decisions to buy hot chips or frozen foods rather than basic fruit and veg is made with convenience or taste, rather than price comparisons, uppermost in mind.

Now working with school-age children, the challenge of feeding the family a healthy selection of foods (never easy) has just intensified.

There is definately a relationship between time available and what goes into the lunchbox / on the dinner menu.

Most days, the temptation to have a revolving cupboard door stocked with convenience foods, is discouraged by a rather strict school policy on what is appropriate for the lunchbox, and a healthy menu at tuck.

Pressure to conform is exerted directly on the children. Therefore, my harshest critic is my child telling me "you can't give me (insert frowned-upon food item) at school".

A healthy tuck comes with a steep price tag. If the government believed intervention was necessary, subsidising a healthy school lunch menu to keep prices down, might be a great start.

At the end of the school day: hungry kids, tired mommy, there are new challenges and by dinnertime, tacos are looking like a gourmet dinner rather than a quick fix.

In my experience, the best way to avoid the easy temptation of junk food is not to purchase it. I've found it better to give the one "no" in the supermarket, then to have to suffer with childish demands throughout the week once it hits the pantry.

The failure of my will power at the point of purchase (whether gainfully employed or not, as a result of a weak regard for self or just to satisfy the craving for salt/sugar) means a deterioration of standards all week.

I don't believe the answer is to remove advertising from the TV, but to remove the children from the TV. This is proving more difficult than controlling the diet as the after-school hours provide precious moments to do the laundry, pay the bills, etc., at the expense of spending time with the kids playing, reading, swimming.

In the end, giving mothers flexible hours, or enabling mothers to stay at home longer, combined with nutritional guidance for mothers (or the person responsible for the shopping and food preparation) in the form of healthy lunchbox ideas etc., might be more effective.

Jeremy Jeremy Jeremy
What a load of loaded rubbish!
Linking emotional terms substitutes ineffectively for both truth and compassion. Where is your evidence that low socioeconomic families are responsible for the obesity epidemic? What do you actually see is the problem with restricting fast food advertising in childrens viewing time? By the way, low socioeconomic families are not the only families who allow their children to view television!

How disappointing. I thought this article was all about that ridiculous and expensive notion of censoring the internet.

Instead we get some silly article how it is only 'poor people' who choose poor quality food causing 'poor kids' to be obese and therefore curtailing advertising of junk food aimed squarely at children has no value.

Precisely how did the argument: poor nutritional choices are made by lousy parents become credible? With the obvious inference that poor parents make lousy parents.

Let's leave totally aside that 5 apples cost more than 2 packets of tim tams and it's the apples that have become the occasional treat, not the chips and bikkies.

Surely, education in nutrition, especially of children, as Katie pointed out, is very effective. Looking at the effect of advertising is part of that.

What a load of crap! that poor people are the causes for the obesity's
in the currant food consumptions in today's world. Genetically, the vast majority of humans sercombe to the levels of sugar in today's diet. You cant fatten my children if you tried. Like my self, they are free to eat what they like and its there metabolism's that are high through us not sitting on our bottoms. Parental responsibilities play an important roll in the phisycal out comes of there children's well being, and with today's work-load and demands, many haven't got the time to display the recreational advantages that the human body needs on a daily biases.

True, some don't understand the nutritional guide lines, which are clearly illustrated on packaged foods, and when my partner observe a little lumpiness showing, we find the time, even if that night, to make sure they burn it off.

To put it simply!

Get off your fat ares,s and move!:)

EVO

EVO your post says a lot about your absorption in your self body image. I imagine you blame poor people for being fat, shabbily dressed and reliant on Centrelink benefits if they haven't got a low paid, insecure, dangerous job. If your income is over $30,000 per year you are not poor and if it's under $150,000 you're not wealthy. Money provides a certain amount of choice in the food you can buy, recreation activities you can participate in, the health insurance you take out, the school fees you can afford as well as where you live.

The article didn't say that poor people cause obesity and it was probably commissioned by the food companies that want to be able to continue advertising on children's TV.