Hey... Do You Think My Kid Has A Problem?

I recently received a message from someone I know about their child.  Basically they were seeking advice from my position as to whether I thought their child may have similar issues with food that I did at that age.  If a child was obese in the 80s, like when I was a kid, there was probably a problem specifically with food.  Now, it is harder to discern.

33% of US adults are considered overweight.  38% of US adults are considered obese or extremely obese.  So, the majority of adults (70%) in this country are not at a healthy weight.  I know I am speaking of weight as defined by the BMI chart, but the correlation of being overweight/obese to chronic diseases is something that can't really be ignored.   Looking at child statistics specifically, 20% of kids are considered obese.  

When I was in school, that would have translated to about 12 kids in the same grade with me that were obese (out of 60 kids).  However, when I was a kid, I was among maybe 3 in any given year that fit that mold.  Processed foods and fast foods weren't as prevalent at the time.  In fact, I remember when McDonald's got a drive through (of course I would remember that).

That's me - middle row, furthest to the right

In any case, the question for me surrounds how the child talks about food.  "Can I have some chips?  I'm not hungry, they just make me happy."  It sounds innocent enough and is probably as a result of boredom, or for the love of the taste of food.  There are people out there who just love the taste of food, some are addicted to food, some use it as a coping mechanism, and some have eating disorders.  I think all of them are distinct, though some people might experience some overlap with each one.

Salt and sugar both trigger the release of dopamine in the brain's pleasure center making them just as addictive as nicotine or cocaine.  In addition, this release actually makes you crave more, just as any other dopamine release would for other addictions.  The fact that in the US, food is readily available, particularly processed food that is full of these two very addictive substances, almost makes it impossible not to have some sort of odd relationship with food.  Every time you consume most of the food available here, you are getting a dopamine "hit".

So, my response to this person was essentially, do you feel like the child is eating in response to something negative (like "hey, I've had a bad day and I want this food to make me happy").  That is something I know I did as a child and something that probably sounds like something to be addressed.  In my case, it was more so, "I've had a bad day" and Nana was like, "here have some ice cream."  But the association came either way (from her or from myself).

Alternately, if it is more like "hey, pizza tastes good to me, I want to eat this pizza (even though I may not be hungry)"; to me that sounds like more of the dopamine-seeking or food-loving behavior (though I'm no expert).  If a child is hiding, hoarding or sneaking food, it is definitely an issue.  All of this to say that sometimes the why of it may not matter as much.  If a child is obese, and feeling like they are being singled out or isolated or made to feel different than everyone else because of it, addressing it may be more important no matter what the root of the issue is. 

But here's the kicker that every parent faces, what do you do?  In my case, the idea was to put me on Weight Watchers.  I am sure they thought it would help me have a better understanding of nutrition and foods I should limit because they were full of sugar and salt.  For me, it just gave me a list of foods I needed to try to eat when I wasn't around my family because I wouldn't have access to them at home.

So, there were trades made at the lunch table.  And allowances stocked away so I could buy ice cream after lunch.  And manipulating Nana into giving me what I wanted even if it was her idea for the Weight Watchers in the first place.  If food wasn't already the focus, Weight Watchers definitely made it the focus from that point on.

Here is an interesting inter-family case study.  My brother doesn't really like or crave sweets.  I remember when he was born, my step-mother read a lot about parenting because she wanted to do it perfectly.  I think a lot of moms, particularly if they are older and more settled in their lives, probably do this.  I mean, you don't want to fuck up your kid.

In any case, she read that you should limit a child's exposure to sugary sweets in their early years.  So she made it clear to Nana that she didn't want him to have the sweets that I loved so much.  I think Nana was tormented because she wanted to keep peace in the family, but at the same time she desperately wanted to love my brother with food and sweets the way she did me.  At the time, I thought my step-mother was kind of being a nazi about it (I was 12 and in love with food, what did I know).

My brother never developed that strong attachment to sweets that I did.  He didn't have them on a regular basis in the formative 0-5 years.  I remember he would go trick-or-treating every year, eat maybe 5 or 6 pieces of candy that night when he got home, then he would forget about the candy entirely.  It was AMAZING for me (I ate all of his leftovers), albeit confusing at the time.  To this day, as a 30-year-old adult, he still doesn't really crave sweet things.

My sister came along about 4 years later.  Nana couldn't resist giving her all the sweets.  She was a rotund child, on par with my weight around the same ages.  Interestingly enough, when she got a little bit older, she changed her eating habits and lost weight.  She did not spend all of her childhood/teenage/adult years as an obese person.  I know she spent a lot of years just eating salad, but I also know a lot of people eat like that to be thinner.  Her experience of it probably doesn't sound this simple.  But I can only write about my observation from the perspective of someone who didn't live at home with them anymore (I left for college when she was 3).

All of this to say that every child is different.  I know that each of us (in my family specifically) had slightly different sets of parameters, but all of us are different in this regard.  I feel you could just as easily take three children (identical triplets for the sake of specificity), raise them in the same way, and potentially have similarly different results in relation to food and how they use/relate to it.

On a personal level, my relationship with food is so screwy that I question how I would have handled it if I had a child of my own.  Like, I know I would try to love them with food exactly the way Nana did.  I already do that to my husband, the rest of my family, my coworkers, my friends, even our pets.  But I don't know how I would address it specifically if my child were overweight.

Parents are sabotaged in modern US society from the get-go.  Everyone is very caught up in making sure they produce well-rounded little individuals who get to play sports, take dance lessons, do gymnastics, play instruments, are artistic, whatever.  This translates to a lot of running around, even if you only have two kids with two activities.

The days of June Cleaver starting a roast at 10 in the morning so that the family has a healthy meal before the soccer game have pretty much ended.  With two parents usually working, it's either fast food in the car on the way, or a quick prep meal at home when there's time.  Everything that is prepackaged for quick prep food at the grocery store like: macaroni, stove top, rice-a-roni, granola bars, oatmeal, grits, cereal, bread, etc... are full of preservatives, chemicals, sugar, and salt.  All of these addictive foods are cheaper and faster to make.  And we aren't even addressing all of the conflicting information we are constantly exposed to about fat, sugar, starches, what to avoid, what to eat more of, etc.

At the end of the day, if I had grown up in a classroom with 12 fat kids instead of 3, I may have felt more at ease about my weight and less singled out.  But that wouldn't have changed the fact that I had an issue with food, it would just have normalized it.  My advice to the person that originally asked me about their kid was to keep a close eye on it.

But honestly, the only way I feel like any of this changes for anyone is a life overhaul.  It is really difficult to commit a family to permanent dietary changes, particularly when something like this may only be affecting one person out of 4-6 total.  In my case, it would have been three households committing to these kinds of changes between my mom's, my dad's, and nana's houses.  Unfortunately, more kids are in multiple households now than even when I was a child.

I don't feel like I can ever be a person that gives advice about what to do specifically to remedy a situation like this.  I can probably give some great advice about what to observe and look for as signs of a problem, but not what to do to fix it.  I don't feel like anything that was done for me as a kid helped, but at the same time I don't know what would have successfully helped me either.  What would I have done differently if I had been my mom in that situation?  I can't answer that.