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Your Child, Pictured as an Obese Adult

Posted on Jan 21st 2009 10:00AM by Martha Edwards

Filed Under: Diet & Weight Loss, Nutrition & Supplements

Would seeing images of your healthy child as an obese adult inspire you to change the unhealthy habits you're teaching them and replace them with healthier ones? The British Government thinks you will, so as part of the Change4Life campaign, they're digitally altering images of children to show how they'll look in adulthood if they don't maintain healthy eating and exercise habits.

It's meant, of course, to scare you into changing any bad habits to make you and your family healthier. And it's working. Isabel Taylor -- the mother of Poppy, pictured here -- says the images are "frightening" and have inspired her to make healthy changes like switching to low-fat mayo and getting the kids active on a regular basis.

It takes more than low-fat mayo to impart habits in your child that will last a lifetime, though. And it starts with you -- kids learn by example, so set a good one for yours.

Would seeing your kids as obese adults motivate you to teach them healthy habits?
Yes, absolutely. I would be disturbed by those images.	54 (84.4%)
Not really. It's not real.	9 (14.1%)
Other -- tell us in the comments.	1 (1.6%)

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1 Comment

Tags: change4life, children, healthy-kids, kid, obese, obesity

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

u262f 1-21-2009 @ 6:14PM

I think the digitally enhanced Poppy looks good. The older Poppy looks happy. I think she looks better in what she's wearing and has better skin tone than the younger Poppy. I wouldn't mind looking like that when I'm 50. Everybody in the digitally enhanced picture looks great to me.

I completely agree with you about low-fat mayo. If their idea of adopting healthier habits is "switching to low-fat mayonnaise and crisps", I think their plan is going to backfire. The mentality taught by switching to low-fat crisps is just wrong. It makes people concentrate on cutting calories without adopting better habits, and this makes them more likely to fall prey to whatever creative labeling the advertising companies come up with. I think teaching people to think that swapping low-fat mayo and crisps helps is part of what has already made many people obese in the first place.