I was watching the early AM news this morning and almost fell over by what I heard. Pediatricians nationwide are filing reports of finding children as young as age 5 with kidney stones and hypertension! This resulting from diets to high in salt. WTF???? :ohmy:What the hell are we doing to our children? I knew the quality of school lunches was deteriorating rapidly in this country, and that a lot of moms are providing fast food as a meal instead of an occasional "treat", but add this to the rampant obesity and food allergies, and we have a tragic epidemic on our hands!!! I sure hope that Moms that have been through what we have as bandsters, take what they're learning and pass it along to their kids to end this viscious cycle.

wow. 5 years old??

i know a few people in my mom's group that take their kids to McD's or BK, etc every day for them to eat lunch... i may take my DD once or twice a month and its not McD's ... more like Chick Fil A... not a great option, but IMO better than McD's... and she requests fruit instead of fries...

In Australia the government is instituting obesity tests on 3 year olds. I'm not joking - 3!!

The problem is complex. I knew one mother who gave her 3 year old fat reduced milk, mistakenly believing it was good for him. She was very looks conscious herself.

Parents today often have no or very little, contact with extended family memebers, so don't get the knowledge and help passed to them. They are working much longer hours nowadays. And its not a luxury, many have to do it to survive. Life is so much about convenience, its so much easier to run passed Maccas (Mcdonalds) on the way home than it is to cook once you get there.

Cooking healthy food doesn't take long at all. Most things can be done in less than 30 minutes, but people view it as too much hard work. Grab take-away on the way home, grab something from the freezer and zap it. So much easier and no thinking involved.

yeah but you can zap frozen chicken breasts and these great new 'bags' that you put frozen veggies in and it steams them... 3-4 cups of frozen veggies in 4 minutes.

Absolutely, I agree with you, but what I was saying is its the perception of most people that it all takes too much. Its their perception that needs to be changed.

Absolutely, I agree with you, but what I was saying is its the perception of most people that it all takes too much. Its their perception that needs to be changed.

I definitely agree, I was lucky in the fact that although I did have take away for dinner every now and then when I was younger my mum was home alot so we almost always had veges for dinner, now that I'm 20 my sisters are 23 and 16 we eat way healthier than ever, if we don't have veges for dinner one night it's salads, and if we dont have that its roast veges with hardly any oil, I guess I'm lucky in the fact that I got used to veges at a young age and liked them - now you compair it to other things like my cousin her son is 10 and he hardly eats but if she bribes him with being good at school and doing homework it's a bribe of maccas for Breakfast it's ridiculous