The primary determinant of fat kids is not school tuck shops, poverty, ignorance of nutrition or lack of exercise – it is the size (and presumably lifestyle) of the primary role model of the child – the parent of the same gender.

stack up with this point:

… This is reinforced by the fact that, contrary to the prevailing myths, 8 out of 10 obese adults were NOT overweight children.

Something to the effect that there are many more obese adults (proportionally) than there are obese children (proportionally), and that the “cause” of adult obesity is usually not childhood obesity, but some behaviour acquired as an adult?
Deborah´s last blog ..Friday Feminist – Mary Wollstonecraft (5)

Fat parents cause fat kids, but fat kids do not cause fat adults. Targeting children with an “anti-fat” message is therefore likely to be a waste of time.

There are consequences from voting decades of welfare statists into power.. including loss of market signals that being fat etc will put up your private insurer premiums.
Its simple enough, if we contract our personal responsibility for health to the Govt then we perforce play by its rules.. whether sensible or not.

JC

You don’t have the ‘flu do you, JC? There are a lot of flying pigs in your comment…

The most consistent result from the OECD surveys is that countries that estimate obesity rates by measuring samples- always get much higher rates than countries that depend on self-reporting.

In effect, countries like France ask a fattie if he thinks he’s obese. And if he say no, he’s not obese. Never mind that he hasn’t seen his toes since Mitterand was president.

In NZ we would measure the guy and confirm that he is indeed obese.

Also, NZ has a very localised pattern of obesity. Purge the sample of Maori and PI’ers and the cruel hard fact is that our obesity rates drop dramatically.
Chthoniid´s last blog ..Photo of me

Your point about NZ position on the “fat table” is true. We are one of the few countries with accurate statistics. There is no doubt, however, that we have a lot of fat people in our society