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Majority of children will be overweight or obese in nine areas of England by 2035, study shows
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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I'm not surprised. So much more of the food we eat now is pre-prepared, highly-processed crap.
Not only is it heavily advertised to us, but it's also far less common for there to be households with two parents where at least one of them has time to do some proper meal-planning, shopping, and cooking. Easier to get a couple microwave meals, air fryer meals, frozen pizzas, and the occasional just eat delivery subsidised by below minimum wage labour carried out by people in the shadow economy.
Then on top of that, kids (and parents) are inside so much more than they used to be. In part because there's simply more to do indoors now. In the 90s you'd have been bored out of your mind if you were stuck in the house for too long. 5 channels on TV, two of them are crap, and the others don't always have what you want on, so you go out and do other things.
Nowadays kids want to stay inside because that's where their phones are, where their tablets are, where their switch, playstation, Xbox is. TVs have streaming services and so many more channels. You can stay inside for hours and never get bored.
Years ago, you knew your neighbours, so you play out with them. Now households feel far more isolated than before and there are far fewer kids on streets, so who would you play out with?
Not that you'd be allowed to play out very much anyway, because the 24-hour news cycle and scary stories on social media has parents convinced there's a paedophile hiding behind every bush.
This will be a very tough problem to solve, and there won't be one silver bullet solution.
Outside also is more dangerous now, far more cars about and even when not in use they clutter up the entire street.
Also can kids just leave the house and "play out" on their own these days like they used to?