Yes, we are. It seems only fair to note that children’s poor diet is a direct consequence of what they are fed by their parents.<\/p>\n
And if you don’t believe it’s a life or death issue, have a look at this story<\/a> of the death of a\u00a016-year-old boy who collapsed and died during a PE class.\u00a0 The autopsy may prove that it was sudden cardiac death, rather than a heart attack, but a friend of ours anecdotally tells us that she has heard of a dozen similar tragedies this year alone: children dying because they have neglected their health – too many chips!<\/p>\n A couple of further illustrations from Ireland are reflected in developed economies around the world. Research shows<\/a> that:<\/p>\n *more than half of children consume sweets and 37% drink fizzy drinks at least once a day;<\/p>\n *the rate of overweight and obese children is increasing by 100,000 a year;<\/p>\n *fruit and vegetable intakes are only half the recommended amount;<\/p>\n *there are inadequate intakes of foliate, calcium, iron and vitamins A, C and B2 is common, especially among girls.<\/p>\n Personal anecdote sends a tangible message. Two recent scenes: Nearing the drop-off point for school at 8.45 am I notice a youth of about 12 enjoying a chocolate bar for breakfast. A 13 year old class-mate of one of my children gave a dramatic performance and refused home fries, french beans, even bread and butter in order to obtain nuggets and chips at the burger bar.<\/p>\n Children have no idea what they’re doing to themselves. And parents are letting them do what they like, or even encouraging bad habits “because it makes them happy”.<\/p>\n The report above also gives this all too true illustration:<\/p>\n One principal said: “We tried to ban crisps a couple of years back, but we experienced extreme resistance from a number of parents, some of whom were very vocal and instead of giving their children one packet of crisp they would give them two, just to spite us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, we are. It seems only fair to note that children’s poor diet is a direct consequence of what they are fed by their parents. And if you don’t believe it’s a life or death issue, have a look at this story of the death of a\u00a016-year-old boy who collapsed and died during a PE …
Continue reading Parents are the problem with children’s diets.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-p","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}