Who is to blame for our Fat Children?
Adrian lost 43 kilos. I don’t know if he sent a search party for them but he doesn’t seem to be missing them really. So Adrian – or his family, as it was not clear – applied to go on Arani Issa as, with all that flab hanging around his tummy and stupendous moobs, he still needed a tummy tuck in order to be able to swim without wearing a t-shirt.
Adrian is lucky. In exchange for a few long minutes of ‘exposure’ courtesy of violining lawyer Joseph Chetcuti and the St. James Hospital, as well as surgeon Mr. Darmanin, Adrian got his life back.
Adrian is 20 years old.
A few years ago, Adrian was just the result of years of bad eating, one of the 29.5% of the child population which is obese. Not a little chubby cheeks. Or slightly fat. Obese.
On Living TV, while you can still watch it, there is Supersize Kids every Thursday. Every single mum accompanying their children to major surgical operations and post-op obligatory exercise (one day we will realise that exercising is not the solution but may just chip away at the tip of the fat iceberg) is huge.
Take a look at the Health at a Glance: Europe report. At the same time as our eating habits are being made stupendously and hugely public (anybody with eyes mhux mimlijin biz-zokkor could see that this was happening) George Pullicino was on a South American United Nations rampage, telling people how ‘clean’ Malta is. In Cancun, Mexico, where many Maltese couples go on honeymoon, George has just donated one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars (one presumes, of our money) to an organisation which falls somewhere underneath the United Nations umbrella, called Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
What Pullicino should be doing is examining the farm to fork concept. Our children today have no idea what on earth a real chicken looks like or that a lettuce is a wonderful plant which grows out of the ground. They know only of nuggets, cardboard boxes and plastic bags. Their parents, feeling guilty as sin because they think that their children are not ‘getting enough’ (love, time, food) feed them stuff out of packets because ‘they won’t eat anything else’. ‘What should I do?’ they moan ‘Let them go hungry?’. Oh yes ma’am, it seems; that wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.
Sadly, most of the columnists that may be interested in this issue have extra weight issues themselves. They will never admit it in public, of course, but we can hardly take advice from those who have little self-control or skills to tackle this problem, who cannot say no to a biscuit and think that their flab is due to not having enough time to walk or pump iron. Sadly, when it comes to public awareness we do not have enough writing or research skills to win over big business with its massive budgets. Years ago, the situation was similar with most 'nutritionists' at the Health Promotion Department: they were scarily fat. I have not been there in yonks so I don't know what the current situation is like.
Every morning I queue at the blessed confectioner’s for basics while harried grandmothers, entrusted with the care of their children’s offspring, feed pre-toddlers packets of low-fat cheese biscuits straight out of the packet. And if the children don’t want to eat it, they force them to.
The children (and adults) drink ice ‘tea’ full of processed sugars (1 bottle of bubble-less pop = average 8 teaspoons of palm or corn derivated ‘sugars’ which the human body cannot even process). At the very fine butcher’s Zammeats, last week, a woman walked in and asked the man behind the counter for some Pizza Alberto. The man did not even know what it was. ‘I don’t think we have any’ he said ‘Well, that’s the only thing my son will eat’ she said,  giving him a wry smile and departing.
The under-25 generation has grown up eating a surfeit of processed carbohydrates: pizzas from packets, ‘milk’ shakes made from powder, food they do not need cutlery for. They don’t know how to eat. They don’t know how to cook.
In the evening, McDonald’s is packed with single fathers whose turn it is to ‘take care’ of the children. They have no idea what to do with them, so they take them to Micky D’s. For a treat. Every time. During the day it is populated by grannies and mummies giving their children ‘treats’ or rather getting ‘rid’ of them while they have a natter with their equally fat friends as the children ‘play’ on machines which are supposed to help them ‘burn calories’. Every other ‘fast’ food outlet is similar only McD’s is the one that has managed to suss out the entire process of enticement and they do it so well I actually admire them.
Our children are growing up in an industrialised food world while George Pullicino, the man responsible for our agriculture and sources of food, sponsors third-world countries with our tax money which could be better invested in compulsory home economics classes, teaching children what food means and where it comes from.
That’s the solution. It’s simple, but it does not involve expensive trips for government delegations in dreamlike south-American honeymoon destinations.
Comments
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Mona
This is a great article! I only wish there was a section dedicated to this topic in the Sunday newspaper - every Sunday.
The article reminds of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It was scandalous how school canteens work around the government guidelines and are allowed to serve greasy pizza for breakfast and chicken nuggets with fries for lunch. "Food" being served to primary school children who at chicken nuggets for dinner the previous day.
At the moment I am expecting my first born. I have preached to my father, in-laws and other relatives, that I will not have my child fed junk food, that sweets and biscuits are not presents and treats Nannu should bring. The answer always being that they think I'm joking. It will be a tough climb up-hill.
I always pride myself when I'm at the supermarket, with ending up with a trolley mostly full of fruit and veg (I wish we could have more of the organic type!). That my freezer is almost always empty because I hate having to freeze meat (and would rather not eat any to be honest). That the only preserves in my cupboards are chickpeas, harricot beans and kidney beans.
Whilst there have been a (minimal) number of campaigns on the subject, we need to get food education into schools - as part of the curriculum. Although I have a feeling that unless parents are educated and start eating healthy themselves, this would be all for nothing. I know a good number of parents that never eat veg (mela jiena fenech?) and obviously don't feed veg to their children.
Great article Mona. Do you think there is any way something could be organized to spread the word? Unfortunately this article will not be read by the people who should read it!
all too true, and so sad too. i would have written exactly the same thing however i wouldn't have been so diplomatic and used so many inverted commas :/ no, parents and/or grandparents aren't "looking after" their kids by shoving junk up their noses. they're simply taking the easy way out so when they're picked up by the next carer and asked whether said kids have been fed, then can ever so graciously say, but of course ... tmajtu ta! like as though s/he had actually bothered to make a simple salad, or some fresh vegetables, or took 5 minutes to grill a steak or something.
what's really ironic is the amount of money people spend on junk. the same people who are always complaining about the gholi tal hajja don't seem to realise that a quick visit to the greengrocer or a visit to the butcher will cost half as much as their alberto pizzas, packets of krips and other sundry junk combined - and will actually get the kids accustomed to real food as opposed to junk food that will only make them crave even more junk, which will inevitably lead to the obesity crises we're now faced with.
i remember when kiddo was young i was regularly told off by various neighbors for being a wicked mother in not buying sweets, iced tea, fizzy drinks and sod knows whatever else. naturally the fact that my son was always on the lean side didn't help much for they saw him as some starved kid from ethiopia or something! the amount of times i heard, "miskin, itimghu lil dak it-tifel" makes me laugh, well almost as much as when he used to shower every morning and leave the house at 7am in winter with still wet hair and wait for the bus with the other kids, whilst the mothers warned me that he'll get some awful disease by washing every morning and going out nice and fresh. one woman even went as far as saying, you're giving your son a tumur f'rasu letting him go out like that! all this whilst i waited with him till the school bus arrived and my own hair would be just as soaked but bunched up in a pony tail. those days i used to laugh and say, woman i've been washing my hair every day for 4 decades and the only tumour around here is in your humour. these days, whilst kiddo happily walks around wearing exactly what he pleases, or worse, really right tops to show off his pecs and his abs, their kids are sad, wobbly human versions of the teletubbies.
rather than giving $165,000 to the "clean stove initiative" in mexico, our dear minister should have first bought himself a mirror, then donated the rest to an educational campaign aimed at both parents and children, warning them of the dangers of over processed foods.
All too true Mona. Being that fat is simple inexcusable. James Watson, one of the guys who discovered the structure of DNA was famously criticised when he said "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them." It's not entirely true, and it'd certainly not pleasant, but we all know what he's talking about.
