http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/162078/british_state_may_take_obese_boy_into.html
Associated Content
By Mitzi Speranzella
Published February 26, 2007
An eight year old child could be taken away from his mother and put under protective custody in Britain, because he is morbidly obese. The mother of a 196-pound boy has defended her refusal to stop feeding him junk food.
Nicola McKeown is a single mom who says her son Connor McCreaddie refuses to eat any healthy foods. "He likes processed foods and if I try him with any salad, vegetables, fruit, he just refuses to eat it or spits it out," she said on BBC Radio on Monday. "When a child won't eat anything else, you've got to feed them what they like."
McKeown is facing a child protection conference with North Tyneside Council on Tuesday. This is the equivalent of a Child Protection Agency hearing in the US.
The last resort of the conference would be for social workers to put him into the care of the state, but McKeown is confident she can help her son lose weight. Connor has already lost 21 pounds following advice from health workers and a dietician starting in January.
A suggestion to put a lock on the refrigerator was firmly rejected by the 35 year old mother. "I wouldn't go that far," she said. "That's not the way to do it, starving your child."
"What's interesting for me, and everything I've read over the weekend about this issue, it's always been about diet; it's about what he (Connor) eats. There's no mention of exercise," he told the BBC.Former British Olympic runner Roger Black said.
"Many, many children in this country are growing up doing very, very little exercise and if you create a culture of young children not used to doing exercise on a daily basis then these problems do happen," Black noted. Black recently spent time in an inner city London school encouraging 12-year-olds to exercise and become more active. It is a program linked to the 2012 Olympics. He added,"The project I've just been involved with is not about creating Olympic medalists for 2012, it's about encouraging young people to do more exercise in school time. It absolutely should be compulsory that children do more exercise than our children are doing now, because it is staggering that some children in this country are doing less than an hour's exercise a week in school."
Colin Waine, the director of the National Obesity Forum in Nottingham, England, called Connor's lifestyle "extremely dangerous". He said that Conner is at a high risk of developing diabetes in his teens, and cardiovascular and nervous system problems in his 20s."
He's really at risk of dying by the time he's 30," Waine said.
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I found this article to be very interesting. British Social Services are talking about taking a boy away from his mom because he is morbidly obese. She has refused to stop feeding him junk food. She says that "He likes processed foods and if I try him with any salad, vegetables, fruit, he just refuses to eat it or spits it out," and that "when a child won't eat anything else, you've got to feed them what they like." I am not sure how I feel about the situation. I do feel that it is the parents responsibility to control what their children eat when they are that young. But if your child will not eat healthy food, what are you supposed to do? I think that healthy eating habits start young and that if this boy was taught how to eat healthy, he would not be as big as he is today.
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