Posted on 01/02/2014 9:36:07 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
One child had a BMI measurement of 35, which for a six-foot man would mean weighing 19st.
Britain's obesity epidemic, which sees NHS hospitals dealing with 1,000 cases every day, is a reversal of the traditional problem when children were undernourished. Increasingly social workers find youngsters being fed a high-fat, sugary diet, which can be just as bad for their health.
The phenomenon is known as "killing with kindness" because the child craves the unhealthy food and a loving parent feels unable to say no.
Professionals say they have to make complex decisions in care proceedings and a family's gross over-eating can be one of the factors that leads to them losing their children.
A Sunday Express survey of councils found that in the past year five children were taken from their families for that reason: two in Wake-field, West Yorkshire, one in Oxfordshire, one in Salford and one in Hounslow, London.
The previous 12 months saw five similar cases in Sheffield, Portsmouth, Lincolnshire, Slough and Harrow, London.
A social worker said: "Only in extreme cases would we take a child into care just because of their weight as we would seek to work with the family to improve their eating habits."
Ex-Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson warned in 2006 that health chiefs would look at removing children from their families if they became super-sized, risking their health.
The first reported case took place in 2007 when an eight-year-old girl from Cumbria, who had to wear size 16 clothes, was taken into care weighing 10st.
The nation's obesity problems have also been uncovered in figures from hospitals in England showing there were 356,072 individual care sessions last year where the patient was deemed to be suffering from obesity or an illness or injury that could have been brought on by being too fat.
It is the first time the NHS has released the statistics in this way and shows how the nation's bulging waistlines are putting extra stress on hospitals' limited resources.
Separate figures from hospitals show a 10-fold increase in obesity-related cases in the past 10 years and a sharp surge in fat-fighting operations, such as gastric banding, on the NHS.
The statistics on hospital care, released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, show women are twice as likely as men to be seen for health problems linked to obesity. The average age of such patients is 53.
Fat patients now outrank breast cancer, epilepsy and glaucoma sufferers in the number of sessions they need for treatment.
Conservative MP Priti Patel said 45 youngsters aged 17 or under had fat-fighting operations in the past five years. "There is an obesity crisis and health services, councils and the Government must take a joined-up approach to resolve it," she said.
A Department of Health spokesman said: "England has one of the highest rates of obesity in the western world and it causes dangerous and life-limiting health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
"But this is not just a matter for Government. We look to industry, health professionals and voluntary groups to work jointly to help individuals improve their diet and lifestyles."
Über Nanny State PING!
Opinion masquerading as fact: Over-nourishment can be just as bad as undernourishment. I don’t think so. Someone who is over-nourished will die late in life, whereas someone who is undernourished can starve to death rather quickly.
The writer of the article supports the taking of children from their families for any reason whatsoever, as long as it is perceived that the parents are doing a poor job.
It’ll be happening here before we know it.
Likely, it already has.
Next up nyc
California, Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas
It’s actions like this that make me glad I’m at the end of my life and not just starting out.
Pure,unadulterated,madness.
.
Take children from families who over feed them and place them with those lovely homo couples I bet.
strikeout poor, insert inappropriate
I remember years ago when Russia was doing this. We were appalled.
If me and my adult siblings were children now, one of my sisters would definitely be taken away due to extreme obesity, absolutely. I suspect this sister had some kind of depression as well, so one problem literally fed the other.
My parents simply did not know how to deal with it. My dad grew up during the depression, this was far from their experience, so once she became a sulking preteen, they ignored the problem. The problem still exists today, but we don’t talk of it anymore, because she doesn’t have the will to change. We accept her as is and move on with our own imperfect lives.
Ministry of Vee Vere Chust Following Orders
Ministry of Disolving Families in order to Promote a Totalitarian Dictator ship
70 years ago the British were fighting against a freedom-hating, overbearing government system like this....
BMI is bunkum.
One of the major newspapers in the UK once famously showed a picture of the England rugby team, all massive lads, all huge muscles with no fat stomachs. Then pointed out that BNI had almost all of them as ‘overweight’.
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