A rel­a­tiv­i­ty un­known en­ti­ty with ad­mirable in­ten­tions, the Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with an­oth­er amor­phous group, “Caribbean Pae­di­a­tri­cians,” is call­ing on so­ci­ety to do some­thing about obese chil­dren, de­clar­ing that they were the first to raise the alarm about the prob­lem of obe­si­ty in chil­dren five years ago.

My ini­tial ar­ti­cle about the over­weight prob­lem was pub­lished 25 years ago in the T&T Guardian on May 31, 2000.

The ti­tle was, “Fat Kids and Spoilt Kids.” In it, I made var­i­ous points. “Pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure and nowhere is this bet­ter il­lus­trat­ed than in the treat­ment of over­weight kids. In the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es, it’s due to ab­nor­mal lifestyle, main­ly bad habits taught to the child in the first 1,000 days of life.

“It starts in the womb with poor an­te­na­tal care. It con­tin­ues af­ter birth with moth­ers teach­ing ba­bies to swal­low ex­ces­sive for­mu­la in the mis­tak­en be­lief that lots of cow’s milk is good.

“Of­ten the in­fant is taught to cope with stress by hav­ing its mouth filled with food. This can set up a life­long fight in which the per­son re­lieves her de­pres­sion or stress by fill­ing her stom­ach need­less­ly. When solids are start­ed, the in­fant is in­tro­duced to the wrong foods, sweet­ened ce­re­als and bot­tled foods, sweet drinks rather than fresh­ly squeezed juices.”

Since then, the Guardian has pub­lished over 20 of my columns on the prob­lem of the over­weight child. The sec­ond was in April 2002, “Sug­ar Food” and the lat­est last Sep­tem­ber, “Obese kids.” All of these ar­ti­cles are freely avail­able on the web and are full of sug­ges­tions and lessons learned from the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­er coun­tries on what to do to pre­vent obe­si­ty.

For ex­am­ple, on Jan­u­ary 22, 2019, in the ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Pre­vent Over­weight,” I sug­gest­ed that if you want to do some­thing about fat chil­dren and over­weight adults, the ma­jor thrust has to be im­prov­ing an­te­na­tal care and breast­feed­ing rates.

Weight con­trol pro­grammes sim­ply don’t work. You spin­ning top in mud if you keep try­ing to lose weight af­ter you have gained it.

Poor an­te­na­tal care, com­bined with in­fec­tion, di­a­betes, poor nu­tri­tion and stress, re­sults in ba­bies who are born too small or too heavy.

Ba­bies like this tend to grow up over­weight. It needs to be said that, due to the ef­forts of the charis­mat­ic Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh, the Woman’s Health De­part­ment di­rec­tor in the MoH since 2017, our an­te­na­tal care has im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last ten years.

The oth­er main point is breast­feed­ing, which Dr Sir­jus­ingh has ad­dressed pos­i­tive­ly. Breast­feed­ing ex­clu­sive­ly for six months, fol­lowed by the in­tro­duc­tion of tra­di­tion­al, lo­cal foods low in processed sug­ars (pump­kin, ba­nana, plan­tains, ed­does, paw paw etc), de­creas­es over­weight by 30 per cent.

Breast­feed­ing al­so pre­vents ex­cess weight be­cause it is ba­by-led. The ba­by de­cides how many calo­ries it needs, when it has eat­en enough for its needs and is sat­is­fied. This pro­motes sati­ety re­spon­sive­ness lat­er on. Moth­er’s milk con­tains ap­petite con­trol hor­mones (lep­tin and in­sulin) that help reg­u­late the ba­by’s ap­petite. Breast­milk al­so stim­u­lates the growth of op­ti­mal gut bac­te­ria that as­sists in re­duc­ing the calo­ries the ba­by’s gut ab­sorbs.

Obese ba­bies be­come obese chil­dren who be­come obese adults. Com­pound­ing this is the change in per­cep­tion lo­cal­ly about what is a healthy weight.

Obe­si­ty is in the eye of the be­hold­er. What was once con­sid­ered nor­mal weight is now con­sid­ered un­der­weight. I rou­tine­ly see obese chil­dren whose par­ents do not think they are obese. They think their fat child is nor­mal. Some go so far as to com­pare their own over­weight bod­ies with their child and say, “He takes af­ter us.”

Pic­tures of them as chil­dren, if they are over 40, do not bear this out. Forty years ago, most Tri­ni’s were slen­der. Then the oil be­gan to flow, Amer­i­can fast-food out­lets ar­rived and the race was on to see who could eat more junk. By the start of the new cen­tu­ry, fat was the norm.

Check out the Car­ni­val videos of peo­ple in the ‘50s and ‘60s and com­pare them with the hefty thighs and arms of to­day’s mid­dle-aged gen­er­a­tions.

Com­pli­cat­ing all this is a head­line in last week’s Thurs­day Guardian which says, “Health Min­istry urg­ing cit­i­zens to take ac­tion as obe­si­ty rates climb in T&T.” Is this all the min­istry in­tends do­ing?

It’s not that they do not know what to do. It’s that up to now they lack the po­lit­i­cal will to make the de­ci­sions to help our pop­u­la­tion.

If they are se­ri­ous about do­ing some­thing about obe­si­ty in T&T, then start at the bot­tom (pun in­tend­ed), im­prove an­te­na­tal care even more and sup­port breast­feed­ing and prop­er nu­tri­tion by pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that favours these ac­tions and stop pass­ing the buck.