Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)?

Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)? - They appear to have had a 'congress' last month: - I wonder how many 'child obesity experts' attended, and how much that 'congress' cost? And whether it has contributed an iota of anything worthwhile toward preventing or reducing child obesity. - I doubt it.

Let's just pick on one guy: Richard Storey. I don't know him or any of the other people who attended the congress. I've just arbitrarily picked on him. - I see that he is Chief Strategy Officer, M&C Saatchi, London, and that his brief is Communicating the messages of obesity prevention to the public. - What d'you think? Think he's doing a good job? Are the messages getting through? - Is child obesity being reduced? Are obese children learning how to combat their very great problems of constantly being insulted and sneered at and bullied and being given the wrong information and advice, and the wrong sort of food? - Or are the messages about obesity prevention that Mr Storey is giving out the same damaging, ineffective pre-digested gobbets of misinformation that obese adults and children have been force-fed for decades now?

If he's plugging the low-fat, calorie-counting garbage that the self-serving Food Industry pushes, then the incidence and severity of obesity will continue to soar. If he's saying that exercise promotes weight loss then he's helping no-one to lose excess weight. If he himself is slim and fit and thinks that 'eating less and exercising more' reduces obesity then he's plain WRONG, and if he thinks that dieting is helpful and that weight loss drugs and weight loss surgery have a part to play in reducing child obesity then I would profoundly disagree with him.

But Mr Storey may not be treading the doom-laden path I have envisaged. He may be giving the correct advice after all. In which case I'm surprised that it's not been headlined in the press and trumpeted in the broadcast media. Too much salt and salty food is the principal, the most important, the overwhelming, cause of child obesity. Children need to have a low intake of salt/sodium in order to prevent damaging fluid retention/weight gain and also to avoid developing a taste for salty food. Too much sugar can also cause unhealthy weight gain, but salt is a major culprit that most people do not know about. An obese child who is fed food containing no added salt will lose weight rapidly, easily and safely. - No dieting, no hunger, no drugs, no exhausting strenuous exercise: it's a no-brainer.

I invite Richard Storey to read my child obesity page, my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection, and the other information on my website, and to read some of the stuff on my blog/s. I wish him success in his mission.

The majority of obese children reject the idea of weight loss surgery.

BBC News reports that majority of obese children reject the idea of weight loss surgery. "Across the board, school is not helping them sort their weight out - the food is problematic, the exercise is inappropriate for them and the bullying culture against them is not addressed."

It's a shame and a scandal that these unfortunate children are not being told the truth about child obesity and not being given the correct advice to reduce it. - Most childhood obesity is caused by eating salt and salty food. Parents (and schools) should as a priority seek to protect children from salty food. As well as causing the children to be obese in itself, it also tends to result in a sort of addiction to salt, which makes it harder to reduce salt intake.

See Children and Obesity

See FAT RETENTION

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

Vulnerable groups

Obese children with weight-related diabetes should be given gastric band surgery from age 15, says expert paediatrician Prof Julian Shield

Fat children should be given gastric bands to tackle diabetes says expert
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Rates of type 2 diabetes - a condition linked with obesity - have soared across all age groups in a decade as Britain struggles to control its weight problem. Seventeen per cent of British children - 900,000 in total - are classed obese or so fat that their health is in danger. Around 1,400 of these have type 2 diabetes, with around 100 new cases a year. The condition is usually diagnosed in those over 40 but rates in children are rising.

Gastric banding for obese children under 18 has been available on the NHS since 2006 but only in extremely rare cases. Such surgery has a less than one per cent risk of fatality although up to 10 per cent of patients can suffer complications."

That's a helluva high percentage of patients that can suffer complications! - It's a crying shame that people are not given the vitally important information that child obesity is caused by the high sodium content of much of the food that children eat. The fluid retention at the heart of all obesity is not reduced by calorie reduction or by exercise, so dieting is inappropriate, unnecessary and ineffective. - Here is what it says about child obesity on my website:

When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods. Just one cheeseburger, for instance, contains almost double the recommended daily salt maximum for children. There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body. Overweight children should not be put on a diet; dieting is harmful and unnecessary and does not usually result in weight loss. Once children start dieting it is often the beginning of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and increasing weight and ill-health.

Unfortunately bread contains a lot of salt and most families eat quite a lot of bread because of using it for sandwiches in packed lunches, and for toast, etc. Because of its high salt content bread is not a healthy food for little children or for anyone who is overweight. Some bread manufacturers have lowered the salt content of certain loaves, but most bread still usually contains 0.5g or more of sodium per 100g. This is too much. - Always check on the packet; look for the lowest sodium content.

Cheese is often recommended as being good for children because it contains calcium, but cheese is not really good for children because it has a high salt content. So don't give them a lot of it. Children can get plenty of calcium by drinking milk and by eating yogurt (but avoid the sort of yogurt that has lots of chemical additives).

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Parents will be accused by the Government of "killing their children with kindness" in a new anti-obesity campaign, it has been reported.

Parents 'killing obese children with kindness', says Government
article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"The campaign is said be based on on an unpublished report by the Department of Health that has been sent to senior NHS managers. According to The Observer, the report says three million young families must be better informed about nutrition to prevent their children becoming obese.

It reportedly features a photograph of three young children with the caption: "One of us will die of heart disease or diabetes when we're older because of the foods our parents let us eat now."

In a section headed "Killing with kindness", it reportedly says: "It's hard to say no to your kids, but if you give in every time you're not being kind, you're killing with kindness. Kids who eat the wrong sorts of food and sit around all day are more likely to get heart disease, cancer, diabetes and to die young. Some will die younger than their parents."

It continues: "Parents do not value physical activity or accept responsibility for children's activity levels. Parents believe their children are already sufficiently active at school.

"Sedentary activity is encouraged by parents. Parents believe it is too unsafe to play outside. mums lack the confidence to take part in physical activity with their children.""

It is not 'killing with kindness' nor is it sedentary activity that is causing child obesity. - It is the continued misinformation that the government and the medical profession churn out about how to reduce obesity. Obesity is not caused by overeating or inactivity, so it cannot be reduced or prevented by eating less and/or exercising more.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention, caused in turn by salt sensitivity. So obesity can be prevented or reduced by addressing the problem of fluid retention. The simplest way to do this is to avoid eating salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

Overweight parents could be paid to walk their children to school as part of a Government campaign to fight the obesity epidemic. - It won't work!

Fat parents could be paid to walk their children to school
article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"Overweight parents could be paid to walk their children to school as part of a Government campaign to fight the obesity epidemic."

"Businesses which have signed up to the initiative include ITV, which is to run a series of programmes tracking viewers' attempts to live healthier lives, and Kellogg's, the cereal giant, which will support breakfast clubs in deprived areas."

There are many benefits to exercise, but reducing obesity is not one of them. There is no evidence that exercise reduces excess weight and there IS evidence that it doesn't! Extra exercise will make the parents and children tired without causing them to lose excess weight.

On Radio 4's "You and Yours" programme today they had discussion and phone-in and email contributions from listeners about the problem of obesity and about the Government's new initiative to tackle it with its creation of so-called 'healthy towns', promoting mainly an increase in exercise. As I've already stated, exercise will not reduce obesity. - One of the listeners who phoned in recited the advice we have all heard many thousands of times, namely to 'eat less and exercise more'. - She gave this advice along with the word that usually precedes it, i.e. she said, "Just eat less and exercise more!" - It's so simplistic and so very patronising - as if people are still unaware of this message and have never tried to follow this advice! - But they have! - over and over and over again! - The advice does not work! The advice usually causes weight GAIN not weight loss...)o:

The way to reduce excess weight/fluid retention is to eat plenty of food, but to avoid salt. - Ironically, Kellogg's, the firm that will be helping with breakfast clubs in deprived areas is one of the firms that adds a great deal of salt to most of its products - like cornflakes - so their 'help' is unlikely to do a lot of good...)o:

What a wasted opportunity! What a waste of money! - What needless, avoidable illness, pain and suffering the nation's obese children and adults will have to endure because the 'experts' - doctors, dieticians, the diet industry, Government ministers, the Department of Health, the World Health Organisation - have for so many years been giving out misinformation instead of helping people with the problems of overweight and obesity! What incalculable harm the food companies have done by their reckless addition of so much salt/sodium to processed convenience food and ready meals! - How they have warped the taste of their customers, giving them a taste for high salt food! - All of these people have great suffering and millions of early deaths on their consciences. - Those who know the truth - and there definitely are some who know the truth - are not correcting the lies that are harming innocent people because they do not want to admit that they have been misleading people all these years. They are frightened of being laughed at or getting into trouble or being sued... - They should be frightened of causing people to suffer pain and illness needlessly.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. It is not caused by too many calories, so it is not reduced by eating fewer calories or by using up more calories by increased exercise.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods

vulnerable groups

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

If you're obese or overweight, Salt is the killer on your plate! Margaret Wilde © 2008

If you're obese or overweight,
SALT is the poison on your plate!

Margaret Wilde © 2008

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

At least seven children have been placed in care over fears they were too fat, it has been disclosed, by the use of Freedom of Information laws

Seven obese children placed in care
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Recent figures suggest a third of 13-year-olds are obese or overweight, and that a million children in England will be obese within five years.

Earlier this month, Tam Fry, a member of the National Obesity Forum's board, told a conference that youngster over-fed by their parents should be treated as victims of abuse, as happens with malnourished children.

Mr Fry said: "It is drastic but it's a long-term therapy. For the sake of the children it does need to be done because we have got children who are horrendously fat.""

Tam Fry is uninformed and is wrong when he says that obese children are obese because they are overfed by their parents. They are obese because of decades of misinformation from doctors and dieticians about what causes obesity.

It is, of course, wholly unnecessary to take fat children into care, and in my opinion, it is also cruel and damaging to the children and to their families to remove them from their homes.

WHEN is the truth going to be told about obesity?

Read my Mensa article Obesity and the Salt Connection

All that is necessary to curb the growing incidence of obesity is to tell the truth about what causes it! - Obesity is NOT caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, frequently because of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. (When doctors prescribe drugs that cause sodium retention and water retention they should warn the patient not to eat salt, or food containing salt, while taking the medication. When they do not give this warning, the inevitable consequence is considerable weight gain.)

Read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt: vulnerable groups

Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' or 'dieting' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods

Children exposed to pesticide in womb twice as likely to be overweight, refuting idea of sole personal responsibility. (Geoffrey Lean, IoS)

Pollution can make you fat, study claims
Report by Geoffrey Lean in the Independent on Sunday

Extracts:

"Pollution can make children fat, startling new research shows. A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that exposure to a range of common chemicals before birth sets up a baby to grow up stout, thus helping to drive the worldwide obesity epidemic.

The results of the study, just published – the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with one of the developing world's greatest and fastest-growing health crises – carry huge potential implications for public policy around the globe. They undermine recent strictures from the Conservative leader, David Cameron, that blame solely the obese for their own condition.

A quarter of all British adults and a fifth of children are obese – four times as many as 30 years ago. And so are at least 300 million people worldwide. The main explanation is that they are consuming more calories than they burn. But there is growing evidence that diet and lack of exercise, though critical, cannot alone explain the rapid growth of the epidemic."

"Experiments have shown that many chemicals fed to pregnant animals cause their offspring to grow up obese. These include organotins, long employed in antifouling paints on ships and now widely found in fish; bisphenol A (BPA), used in baby bottles and to line cans of food, among countless other applications; and phthalates, found in cosmetics, shampoos, plastics to wrap food, and in a host of other everyday products.

These pollutants – dubbed "obesogens" as a result of these findings – are so ubiquitous that almost everyone now has them in their bodies. Ninety-five per cent of Americans excrete BPA in their urine; 90 per cent of babies have been found to be exposed to phthalates in the womb; and every umbilical cord analysed in the new Spanish study was found to contain organchlorine pesticides such as HCB."

"Dr Pete Myers, one of the world's leading experts on obesogens, told The Independent on Sunday last night: "This is very important. It is the first good study of the effects on the foetus. Its conclusions are not surprising, given what we know from the animal experiments, but it firmly links such chemicals to the biggest challenge facing public health today.""

I think we can probably trust the actual findings of the study because it is unlikely that it was funded by the pharmaceutical industry. (It is wise never to trust research funded by Big Pharma.) - What we need always to be sceptical about are the conclusions drawn from research, because these conclusions are often based on false premises/assumptions/beliefs/prejudices/self-interest.

There are a number of false assumptions in this report, the main one being contained in this statement: "Everyone agrees that people gain weight by taking in more calories in their food than they burn off through everyday activities and exercise." - The truth is that the calorie explanation of weight gain is untrue. -

OBESITY IS CAUSED BY FLUID RETENTION/SODIUM RETENTION/SALT SENSITIVITY, NOT BY EXCESS CALORIES OR BY INSUFFICIENT EXERCISE. And fluid retention frequently leads to FAT RETENTION.

Fluid retention has a number of contributory causes, to which we should perhaps now add foetal exposure to pollutants. - The good news is that whatever the contributory causes of any individual's obesity, there is a fast, safe, sure way to reduce/prevent it, namely AVOID SALT AND SALTY FOOD AND AVOID PRESCRIPTION DRUGS UNLESS THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY AND TAKE THEM IN THE LOWEST EFFECTIVE DOSE AND FOR THE SHORTEST PERIOD OF TIME NECESSARY.

The main causes of salt sensitivity are

1) prescription drugs, mainly steroids, HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications,

anti-psychotics and antidepressants,

but also including many painkillers

2) eating salt and salty food in childhood

3) dieting, i.e. eating insufficient food

4) high levels of oestrogen and eating salty food during pregnancy

5) high levels of oestrogen and other drug residues in our drinking water supply

6) depletion of the body's calcium, magnesium and potassium levels, and vitamin D deficiency

7) eating insufficent fruit and vegetables

The first three are the most important in terms of the numbers of people harmed and the severity of the harm.

Obesity is on the increase mainly because doctors are recklessly prescribing more and more drugs, often in recklessly high doses and constantly give obese people the catastrophically harmful advice to "just eat less and exercise more". - This advice does not reduce obesity; it usually increases obesity because it further weakens the walls of the blood vessels, thus leading to greater fluid retention and malnutrition.

There is further and fuller information on my website. If you need more explanation I can be contacted from my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

See advice for pregnant mothers

A "forgotten generation" of teenagers is suffering the catastrophic health effects of obesity, drugs, drink and casual sex, according to research.

Teenage health 'timebomb' threatens NHS
Article in the Telegraph:

Extract:

"Too much food, too much alcohol, too many drugs and too much sex has created a "timebomb" of health problems that will do lasting harm to a generation and place mounting pressure on the National Health Service, the Conservatives say.

They accused the Government of "neglect" over the issue and said Britain's "broken society" was to blame. Using official NHS and Department of Health figures, party researchers detailed the growing toll on teenage health of unhealthy and illegal behaviour including:

• The number of teenagers admitted to hospital for alcohol-related treatment in 2006-07 was 12,682 – up 51 per cent since 2000-01;

• Admissions relating to smoking tobacco rose 41 per cent;

• From 2003 to 2007, the number of teenagers treated for sexual infections rose 21 per cent;

• The number of teenage girls having abortions rose 15 per cent from 2003;

• In 2006-07, a third of children turning 13 were obese or overweight. The data suggest that some social and health problems are growing fastest among younger teenagers.

Drug-related hospital admissions among 11-15 year olds rose 33 per cent from 2000. Smoking-related admissions were up 63 per cent.

The nationwide figures for England mask sharp regional disparities, with the North reporting worse figures on almost every front.

Sexual infections rose by 58 per cent among teenagers in the North East, for example, compared with three per cent in the West Midlands.

Teenage abortions were up 30 per cent in the North West, but down two per cent in London. The capital has the fattest children, with 36 per cent recorded as obese or overweight on entering Year Six at school. The English average was 31 per cent."

Well I can help with the obesity problems. - Teenagers (and other people) need to be told the truth about what causes obesity, namely salt sensitivity/fluid retention, and the best ways to prevent/reduce obesity, namely avoid eating salt and salty food. - And manufacturers of processed foods and ready meals need to be curbed BY LAW from adding salt to their products unless there is a genuine need for it - and I don't mean the need to flavour it!

And everyone should be told the truth about dieting, namely that dieting does NOT reduce obesity and that dieting is harmful and usually causes weight GAIN, because it increases fluid retention, and weakens bones, etc. leading to greater risk of fractures later in life.

Obese children are 'suffering high blood pressure'

Obese children 'suffering high blood pressure' - Telegraph

Extract:

"Scientists who studied 14,187 children aged between three and 18 found that more than three per cent had high blood pressure but three quarters of them had not been properly diagnosed.

The team warned that doctors need to be more aware of the condition.

It comes as one quarter of children in the UK are classed as overweight and the obesity epidemic is growing.

Having hypertension as a child increases the risk of heart disease in adulthood as the longer blood pressure is elevated the greater the risk.

Children are also being diagnosed with type two diabetes which is usually associated with being overweight.

The authors of a study of children in Ohio, America and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association said: “Hypertension in children has been shown to correlate with family history of hypertension, low birth weight, and excess weight. With the increasing prevalence of childhood weight problems, increased attention to weight-related health conditions including hypertension is warranted. Several lines of evidence suggest that blood pressure in US children and adolescents is increasing in parallel with weight.”

Of the 14,187 children and adolescents studied between June 1999 and September 2006 in the outpatient clinics 507 children and adolescents (3.6 per cent) had hypertension. Of those 131 (26 per cent) had a diagnosis of hypertension or elevated blood pressure documented in the electronic medical record meaning three quarters had not been formally diagnosed. "

It is fluid retention that causes the obesity and the high blood pressure in these children. And fluid retention in children is caused by eating food high in salt. - It is not caused by overeating or by lack of exercise. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html Here is an extract from the page:

"When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods. Just one cheeseburger, for instance, contains almost double the recommended daily salt maximum for children. There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body."

Lose weight and improve your health by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! - How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions