Food fixations
New figures published in the British Medical Journal confirm what has been widely feared – our children are ballooning. Researchers from King’s College London have calculated that, from 1984 to 1994, overweight increased from 5.4% to 9% in English boys and 9.3% to 13.5% in English girls. Figures were even higher for Scottish children. A sedentary lifestyle and too many high fat foods are thought to be the main reasons why obesity is rapidly becoming the single biggest children’s health concern. Long-term physical implications include, increased risk of diabetes and heart disease as adults.
Just as fat is an emotive issue for adults, so it is for children
Children’s anxieties about fat are horrifyingly expressed in the increasing number of youngsters who develop eating disorders. Children as young as six are now becoming anorexic and, according to Deanne Jade, the Principal for the National Centre for Eating Disorders, children as young as five have phobias about the possibility of gaining weight. ‘By the age of nine or ten, a third of all children are actively amending their eating, in order to deal with the possibility of weight gain,’ she says.
Children, who have traditionally been carefree and unselfconscious about their bodies, are now spending those precious early years fretting about the size of their tummies and bottoms. A recent survey conducted on behalf of the private health care provider, BUPA, showed that one in five children wants cosmetic surgery because they don’t think their looks are good enough.
Passing on the right messages about body image
Clinical psychologist, Lindsey Williams, believes children are simply echoing what is going on in the adult world. ‘We are becoming increasingly anxious, as a society, about obesity,’ she says. We are passing down to our children our own hang-ups about food and body image, which is why London psychotherapist, Em Farrell, warns parents to be careful when they talk about their bodies in front of children. Farrell, who has herself recovered from bulimia, runs day workshops for parents who are worried about their children and food. She advises parents to talk positively about their own bodies, within earshot of their children. This is particularly important for mothers and daughters, where connections between dieting and eating disorders are most often found. ‘If you see your mother expressing dissatisfaction with her own body, it’s not surprising that a child thinks that a female body is not the best thing to have,’ says Farrell.
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