Nowadays with all the TV, radio and news paper advertising we are constantly being bombarded with eateries telling us to eat here, eat there and then there are the places doing specials and 2 meals for the price of 1. When you leave your home and head out to the local shopping centre you cannot help but notice the aroma of cooking from around the four corners of the world.

As kids we were taken out to a restaurant for our birthday or a special occasion, and every month we would have a treat, something from the local chip shop or if we were really lucky a Chinese, it gave us as family something to look forward to. Now that was going back a few years ago I have to admit.

Like I said you cannot go down the local shopping centre without passing at least five restaurants all selling burgers, pizzas, kebabs and noodles, most filled with families all enjoying their lunch/dinner. As we pass the shops we can see families munching into large portions of fish and chips, burgers and some enjoying foods from other exotic countries.

Everyone loves going out for their dinner but as parents we have a legal responsibility to look after our children’s health. In a recent survey it was estimated that one in six children under the age of 18, eat a ready meal or a take away every day. This could lead to serious health problems for our children in later life, problems such as:

• High salt levels and lack of exercise this will increase their risk of stroke.
• Obesity will affect many of our children causing them to suffer from heart problems, diabetes and joint problems.
• Suffer from many different types of cancer, including liver, kidney and stomach.

Think about what you are doing to your kid’s health the next time you decide to take them out for a three course meal, look for the healthier options on the menu and your kids will thank you for it in years to come.

Everyone that has ever tried to lose any weight will know just hard it really is, watching every piece of food that enters your mouth, wondering if that will add on an extra pound or have you got it just right and amaze yourself in time for the next weigh in? People that are trying to lose weight must really hate this time of year as shop windows are often filled with cakes shaped like bats and biscuits covered in chocolate and made to look like spiders that’s not to mention the pungent sweet smell of toffee covered apples. So what can we do to stop the temptation of dipping into our kid’s sweetie jar?  One thing worth remembering is that processed sugar will slow down your metabolism; this in turn will have an effect on your digestive system making it harder to burn off excess fat. Eating fruit and drinking water will often give you that full feeling so there is no need to dip into the cookie jar.

What else can be done to protect our waistline?

As we all know, as long as there are sweets in your house you will be tempted to sneak just the 1 which will lead to 2 and so on, do you really want to have all those calories sitting in your cupboards? Try to think of the consequences of eating too much chocolate, the headaches, feeling sick and the expanding waistline. One of the hardest things to do is to try and give the sweets away, take them to work give them to friends, try and get them out of your house. At the end of the day we are only human and we will be tempted to eat our way through bags and bags of sweets.

When we put on weight our bodies go through certain changes, our heart has to work harder to pump the blood round our body. Kidneys and liver are both put under pressure to cope with all the extra food we consume and our joints take more strain with every step we take.

If we continue to eat we will become obese, obesity is measured by your Body Mass Index (BMI) which
measures the amount of excess fat that is stored in your body. People become obese with lack of exercise and when the amount of calories taken in is far more than your body requires. Being obese and overweight, in the most extreme cases can cause death, below are the most common health problems brought about by being overweight and obese.
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