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Naturally breast milk is by far the best form of nutrition for
infants of this age but it is clear that the number of breast-fed
babies is declining. It follows, therefore, that more children in
this category are receiving processed milks which, despite diverse
formulae, have never proved complete substitutes. Human breast
milk is relatively low in saturated but high in unsaturated fatty
acids whereas with cows' milk the reverse is true, a fact which
has never been given sufficient publicity. It would seem that
concentration on "calorie intake" of infants at this time has
been almost to the exclusion of the intrinsic qualities of its
ingredients.
Many mothers have the idea that a fat baby is a healthy
baby. As a result, overfeeding occurs and the foundations for
abnormal dietary habits are laid which prove extremely difficult
to break in later life. Threatened by the mass media with malnutrition
of all kinds from avitaminosis and trace element
deficiencies to a lack of energising carbohydrates if certain foods
are not ingested and, with minimal attention to a balanced diet,
the cossetted off-spring is quickly weaned on to cereals and
encouraged to over-eat by anxious, over-zealous but conditioned
parents. Later, the child's diet is further adversely affected when
increased pocket money enables the attractions of the tuck shop
to wreak their seductive havoc. Replete with a host of bad
dietary habits the child advances towards adulthood with all
the disadvantages of obesity often to a life of miserable disability
or one prematurely shortened by disease. Evidence clearly points
to the fact that the "fat" child is extremely likely to become an
obese adult.
With such a situation, it should occasion no surprise to find
that of school children inspected in the Borough during 1971, viz.
15,255, some 113 were noted for treatment and a further 310
for observation in connection with obesity, equivalent to 27.73
per 1,000 children examined.
Use of terms such as "overweight" and "obesity" suggests the
existence of a standard of normality with which comparison may
be made. This is not so. Neither this country nor any other
country has really solved the problem of collating reliable information
on a national scale, partly because of the enormity of the
task and partly because of the difficulty of devising a single study
with "terms" that would satisfy the nutritionalist, the sociologist
and the economist or, for that matter, the biochemist, the anthropometrist
and other technical participants.
There is neither an ideal nor a normal weight but only an
average weight which, by general agreement, is calculated from
the tens of thousands of experiments, measurements and