3 Year Old Dies From Obesity (UK)

[Pert_UK]

This is a massive story in the UK at the moment, as a group of MPs have just released a scathing report into the government's lack of action regarding obesity in the UK.....basically, we're getting fatter and fatter.

"Heart failure, caused by obesity, has killed a child aged just three, it has been revealed. The shocking case was highlighted in a scathing report on obesity by MPs which says too little has been done to tackle the epidemic.

The case was revealed by doctors at the Royal London Hospital. Specialists there have also seen four children "choked by their fat" who need breathing assistance to treat sleep disorders caused by blocked airways...

The Daily Mail reported that the three-year-old who died of heart failure was a Bengali girl from east London who should have weighed around 2st 4lb (14.5kg), but instead had a Body Mass Index (BMI) which equated to around 6st (38kg)."

From:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3752597.stm

Now look - this is a terrible tragedy, but surely the parents should at least be investigated for child neglect? They've effectively killed their child through gross negligence, haven't they?

[Flagg]

1. fuck the parents

[supernova]

2. How on earth

do you let a 3 year old get THAT BIG?!?

That's abuse, IMO.

[icymist]

4. Or neglect. n/t

[mn9driver]

3. Quite sensational.

I'd rather look at her complete medical history before passing judgement.

[hlthe2b]

6. ditto... there are quite rare conditions that can cause extreme obesity

above and beyond behavioral factors (i.e., out of proportion to simple "over-eating")

Obesity experts should be called to review her medical records and autopsy before anyone makes conclusions or takes legal action against the parents, IMO. Tragic, yes, but requires conclusive investigation and not knee-jerk action.

[Warpy]

10. Agreed

Toddlers are finicky eaters, and most parents despair of getting them to eat anything. Unless the parents force fed her like a foie gras goose, the state won't have much of an abuse case, should they bring one.

My guess is that she had one of those bizarre enzyme disturbances that make sufferers ravenously hungry all the time.

The only neglect would be in not consulting a pediatrician and getting her checked out. The UK has national health insurance, so there's no excuse like there is in the uncaring US.

[Pert_UK]

25. Well yeah but........

1 - I said that there should be an investigation, rather than just nailing her parents to the wall without evidence and

2 - this case has been used to highlight the growing problem of obesity in the UK. It was used in a Government report that was released publicly. Although the Government do sometimes fuck things up, you've got to assume that somebody checked the facts in this case before labelling it "obesity" and including it. They'd lose all credibility otherwise.

[aquart]

5. Any chance they came from such terrible poverty

that they couldn't see a negative in having too much?

But I'd still ask a lot of medical questions. Making children eat more than they want ain't all that easy.

[progressivebydesign]

7. Controlling the eating habits of a 3 year old is pretty easy..

.. they only eat the food you bring in the house. If you feed them garbage, they'll get fat. If you give them free grazing, and allow them to eat anything they want, they get fat. If you take them to fast food meals all the time, you're damaging their health. This is a no brainer, folks. Children have to learn good eating habits, it's not instilled. While I know that 3 year olds can be finicky, there is no excuse allowing a child to get that obese. A child will not starve themselves to death if they can't have sodas and hamburgers.. they'll eat what you bring in the house, if they have not been offered fatty, sugary alternatives.

I see that some people are already using the "medical condition" defense. If anyone would take the time research it, very.. very.. few people actually have medical conditions that cause obsesity. If you notice that the Western world is getting fatter in the past 30 years, that is not because of a sudden spike in low-metabolism (the usual excuse), it's because our eating habits are atrocious, and cheap, fattening, chemical laden foods are plentiful. Also, I just read that most toddlers get almost NO physical activity anymore, opting for t.v. and computer games.

The parents should be investigated for neglect. You can't let a 3 year old eat itself to death. If there was a big problem with the child, then doctors and psychiatrists should have been called in. If they were, and it turns out that the parents were trying to get help, then they should be exonerated.

[bleedingheart]

11. you are right about the medical defense...

but as you stated it is a very rare condition.

I personally blame a lot of modern conveniences for why people in the Western world are getting fatter.

We sit on our asses watching TV way too much...
We sit at our computers way to much.
We can have a meal ready in less than 5 minutes courtesy of microwaves.
We have garage door opener, TV remotes, drive thru windows...etc all to make life convenient but they also allow us to sit on our asses way too much.

[Warpy]

12. Wrong

When toddlers were given a low shelf in the fridge with a variety of foods on it, researchers found that they all managed to eat a balanced diet (even though the parents had despaired over food fads), and none overate.

Toddlers do have an "off" switch. The key is allowing them to use it, and supplying them with alternatives to fast food.

[Emillereid]

20. Most parents of three year olds despair at trying to get them to eat

much at all. Toddlers are notorious 'finicky' eaters --- you can usually bring a mountain of food -- fast and otherwise -- into the house and toddlers wouldn't care. A ten or twelve year old, yes, I'd believe could be obese because of too many bad food choices -- but not a three year old -- unless the parents were force feeding the child. There's something else at work in this case -- I'd bet my last dollar on it. In the epidemiological world there has been the lurking the idea that at least some obesity might have some 'microbe' involvement -- some infection that affects the neurological, hypothalamic 'eating' control centers in some way -- could be. Or maybe this child had some 'major' psychological disorder.

[JNelson6563]

30. I have witnessed such

I remember seeing these two obese women with a little girl, 3 or 4 years old. Beautiful child, a bit over-weight though. They were huge women and they were sitting at a table eating (this was a shopping setting). They kept yelling at her to eat when it was obvious she didn't want any more. I could only think they were determined to make her just like them. It was sickening. It took everything I had to not go over to them and tell them to stop forcing her to eat.

Julie

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Bloody Christ...

3 years old and 6 stone? That's about 2/3 of what I weigh (at 26 years old and six feet tall)...

Were her parents fattening her for pâte, or just incredibly bloody stupid? "Oh, what can it hurt...let her eat the whole tin of biscuits...after all, she likes them, and a growing child needs to eat..." Uh...somehow this doesn't quite compute.

And it certainly does seem that this constitutes gross neglect on their part, just as much as if she'd died of malnutrition...

[zelda7743]

16. Hmmm....

I don't know what a stone is, but 38 kilos is equal to 83.6 pounds. If she weighs two thirds of what you weigh, that puts you around 127 pounds at 6 feet tall. You're one lanky guy. :)

[maxsolomon]

19. a stone is 16 lbs.

i think.

or 14.

[bleedingheart]

9. Unless this little gal had an underlying condition which caused

her to become obese (yes there are rare disorders that don't allow some children to stop eating...) I think these parents are to blame.

I have small kids and they don't eat that much...and what they eat is typically very healthy...fruits, veggies...etc.

I limit the amount of junk food and we rarely eat fast food with our kids...but when we do I buy things like a pizza and I make a salad to serve with it...and they drink milk or water with their meal.

Personally I think a lot of people use food to occupy kids... and with the way some kids watch TV and get no activity...this trend will sadly continue.

[hadrons]

13. if she was in America, Maury would have had her on his show ....

speaking of Maury and when he does his fat baby shows, all of the mothers are the type that should be investigated for child neglect ... I remember one 'moran' mom who was giving her 80 lbs 1 and half year old Nestle Quick

[okoboji]

26. yep

Maury does like his fat baby shows ... I've seen several. In all cases those todlers could out-eat me.

Yes .. the Nestle Quick mom was unbelievable.... all of them were. I remember the one kid that the parents would take to a All you could eat Rib resturant and the kid proceeded to eat 4 or 5 racks of ribs.... this was a 3 year old.

[Pachamama]

14. Another Great American Export - JUNKFOOD/Fastfood

...along with Arms & Bullets....ugh...

Regarding this 3 yr old - (speaking as a Mom of two, including a 4 yr old who is "finicky"...

Poverty - perhaps, because sadly, along w/ poverty, there is ignorance and a tendency to buy cheap junkfood...

However, given the UK healthcare system, I find it incredible to think that no doctor saw this child over the last few years...something like this didn't develop overnight in a child...I lean towards neglect and thus abuse.

[demnan]

15. There must have been a thyroid disorder or something

Even fat people don't start out that fat as little kids.

[demdave]

17. The article clearly states they died from obesity.

It also states that some may blame the parents but it is difficult to deny food to a child that continually asks for it. This would imply that it was a matter of overfeeding.

[salvorhardin]

21. Sorry, that's BS.

No one dies from obesity. Fat is not a poison. Obesity may be a complicating factor in a death, but there is always an underlying cause. In this case, from the scant few details given, the infant died from heart failure. Don't get me wrong, this kid was obviously morbidly obese. Obesity played a large role in her death. However, saying that she died from being fat is inaccurate and misleading.

The question to ask here is how does a three year old kid get to be 83 pounds!? That's a kid who (if average height for age) should be just under three feet tall weighing 83 pounds. I can not imagine this without a medical cause or forced over-feeding. That would be an average weight-gain of over 2 pounds per month SINCE BIRTH! I also find it hard to believe that no doctor saw this baby since she was born, but that's what I have to assume because I can not picture any doctor allowing a three year old kid get to this weight without accusing the parents of negligence.

[bleedingheart]

22. as to your assessment of weight gain ...

babies are expected to double their birth weight by two months (at least here in the states)...

I pulled out my son's baby book and he was 7lbs at birth...by two months he was 15 lbs.....so there are points when children do gain a fair amount of weight.

But to put this in perspective my oldest is eight and is thin/good shape....he weighs about 46 lbs...

[salvorhardin]

23. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply a linear curve

There's a height-weight chart for girls to 36 months of age here:
http://pediatrics.about.com/library/growth_charts/ngirlsbirth.htm

...which shows that a new-born girl in the 50th percentile should weigh about 8 pounds, but her weight will have doubled by 6 months. By 36 months, this chart indicates a mean weight of about 31 pounds.

However, I think this chart also indicates that this particular girl was in some way incredibly abnormal. To have weighed 83 pounds would put her well above the 99th percentile. I still stand by my assertion that the only way something like this could happen is through either abuse, negligence or a very rare medical condition. While children are undeniably fatter than in previous decades, this particular case is an oddity. To tie it into a story about obesity in children in general is simply bad journalism.

[demdave]

24. Strange, none of the doctors interviewed mentioned other conditions

that would have led to obesity. Since they didn't feel the need to qualify the obesity as being medically induced, I don't feel the need to invent this excuse. The doctors were the ones that were commenting on individual cases, I think they would know. Anything beyond their statements is baseless speculation and excuse making, which,when it comes to being overweight, is rampant around here. I have always noticed that while a very small percentage of obesity is related to a disease, a majority of obese people use it as an excuse. Myself, I'm overweight because I eat and drink too much.

[Nihil]

28. Nope, no BS

From the BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3752597.stm):

> Dr Sheila McKenzie, a consultant paediatrician at the Royal London,
> told the Health Select Committee: "In the past two years one child
> at the age of three has died of heart failure secondary to extreme
> obesity."

Note the phrase "heart failure secondary to extreme obesity".
The consultant did not say "heart failure, complicated by slight obesity"
or any other words that may have been taken out of context and hyped
by the tabloids.

Hence your claim that

> saying that she died from being fat is inaccurate and misleading.

is itself "inaccurate and misleading" (a.k.a. "BS" :-) ).

Dodging the issue like this is akin to saying "he didn't die from
being shot, he died from loss of blood".

[kimchi]

18. That is 83 pounds (for we who are metric illiterate)

Very sad. And to think the doctors here in the US gave me holy hell because my child was "underweight".

[classics]

27. Poor parents.

Not only have they lost thier beloved child to a horrifying painful death, now they have to deal with the Jerry Springer crowd who will want to stone them to death for having been given such a special child.

People in the UK and here in the US have had thier children stolen from them _many times_ before for this birth defect... only to have the government give the children back after they determined there was no abuse. i.e. they couldnt starve the little babies thin so the parents were not giving them IV Crisco to begin with.

Blaming the parents for whatever disease process caused this very visible and horrifying death of the baby is the worst sort of knee jerk hatred... but there is a very large population in the US and UK that believe all humans are born thin and can only become fat by corruption with the sins of sloth and gluttony.

Some of them work for newspapers and television and will happily write such stories and exploit the pain of parents who just watched thier child die horribly, for a buck.

But then again, it will sell a lot of diet pills.

[Pert_UK]

29. I'm actually seeing a lot of restraint here.......

People aren't 100% blaming the parents on this, but are stating that IF the parents played a part then they would be guilty of neglect.

Given that this was highlighted as a case of obesity in a government report (rather than a tabloid newspaper) one should at least consider that the death was a preventable tragedy in which somebody or some group were partly at fault.

I find it stranger that you've gone to the opposite extreme and assumed that the parents were blameless. Should we just assume that all childhood deaths from overweight are due to disease, or should we consider whether parents and doctors screwed up?

It's not that long ago that a UK baby died from salt poisoning because its parents only fed it on instant mashed potato, so it's not impossible that parents do sometime cause the deaths of their children through ignorance and neglect.