What can we do about the obesity epidemic?

[laundry_queen]

142. +1

I breastfed my 4 kids until they self weaned. They have a much healthier eating pattern than I do. I was bottlefed (soy formula, which I believe had something to do with my PCOS although I cannot prove it - I cannot find any studies save for one Chinese study that showed a link between soy formula and irregular periods) and my mom admits to trying to get me to take more until the bottle was gone. She also talks about me constantly projectile vomiting up everything I ate. Likely, she was feeding me too much. I was the only baby bottle fed on both sides of the family in several generations - and I'm the only obese one in the family and I don't think that's a coincidence.

I also think that needs to be extended to how parents teach their children to view food. I could tell many stories about how my parents demonized certain foods, shamed us for eating others, had rules that taught us to ignore our full/hungry signals and so on. I don't think how my parents taught us to view food is an anomaly in our society.

With my kids, we don't demonize any foods. I don't force them to finish meals or comment on how little they ate or shame them for the left overs. If they are hungry between meals, they get healthy snacks with no judgment about if they should be hungry or not. I don't use junk food as a reward. I think my kids have a much healthier relationship with food than I have. They certainly are good at being able to tell if they are full or not. I'm not as capable with that as they are.