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What could happen with a 12 years old with really bad eating habits?

Hello, I have a nephew who has really bad habits since he was a little kid, he's very skinny, he's 12 years old and only eats junk foods like hamburgers, fried chicken, ice cream with condensed milk, very sweet desserts, also he never drinks water only sodas, at breakfast he doesn't eat, sometimes he eats dessert at breakfast, at lunch he eats fried chicken with maximalta, at the afternoon he eats candies with soda and for dinner he eats hamburgers, fried chicken or some sweet dessert. He play videos on his phone all day long or on the TV very close to it, he never brushes his teeth and doesn't clean his body. I want to know what could happen with his health in the next years?
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If he truly eats like that all the time -- and if you're not living at his house it may be you've only seen what he does sometimes, not all the time -- it would be odd he's skinny unless he's super active all the time.  But reality is, different people have different consequences of their behavior, and some of the bad things that happen to people because of their behavior might not show up until they get past 40 years old and it starts to hit home.  At the least, he should be having lots of teeth problems, but again, he might have really strong teeth.  So there's no definite way to know who can do pretty much anything and feel great and live to 100 and who can't.  He's certainly playing the dangerous side of the odds, though.  Does he have parents?  Because if he's eating this way they're either incredibly disengaged parents or they eat this way too and so you can see what their health is like.  Are they obese?  Are they sick a lot?  Have blood sugar problems?  Bad teeth?  That might tell you where he's headed, but again, you don't know if this will continue or if he'll change his habits when he gets older.  Wouldn't recommend how he lives, but also can't predict how it will all turn out, either.  If you want to play the odds, you wouldn't do this, but again, he's the only him.
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He has only his mother but she is the one who gives him that kind of food, my nephew live with his mother, grandmother and 2 uncles, my family is healthy but my nephew is the only one who's not, I'm with them only for vacation but they tell that my nephew has this behavior all the time and they can't do anything because his mother doesn't care.
He has had problem with his teeth this weeks, he has loose teeth, also hi has pimples and blackheads on his face, he never does physical activity, his sit down all the time playing on the phone, I thing he has problems with his eyes too.
He never goes to the doctor so we don't know is he has high sugar level and he is really skinny.
We can't do anything because his mother doesn't care and works all day long
973741 tn?1342342773
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hi there.  I'm a mom and have two boys.  One eats healthy and one tries not to.  My theory is that I'm the shopper.  If I don't want them to have soda, I don't buy it.  That really eliminates some of the bad food choices. and I think that they begin to develop habits.  Now, I hated vegetables as a kid but as I got older, I developed a taste for them.  So, our pallet does change as we mature.  I loved tv dinner spaghetti. Now?  Yuck. But I had that for dinner regularly because I'd eat that and not complain.  Guess my mom took the easy route at times.  And I take the easy route too sometimes, to be honest. We order pizza a lot.

But I also know that I have to instill in my kids the idea of a health lifestyle.  I need to model eating properly and exercising.  I need to make the good food choices readily available and limit the bad ones. I need to also try to make some choices that they prefer more healthy.  A hamburger isn't bad if you make it at home with lean ground beef, whole wheat bun, lettuce, tomato, etc.  One that is from a fast food place loaded with sodium and fat?  Not so good.  So, you can play around with what you serve to make it healthy.

And I found that as my kids got older (now 15 and 14), they developed goals eating wise.  Both play sports or run competitively.  So, they want to be healthy and have proper 'fuel'.  Honestly, my picky child got advice from his coach that was impactful that I could never give him. Sigh.  He eats a spinach salad now often and various other things he wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole before the coach talk.  He also has GI issues that are long standing and has found that his hydration and eating impact that. That is motivating to him as well.  My other son thinks about things like what will give him the most energy without being heavy before a game so he started thinking about his food in those terms.  It helps when they get involved themselves.

I would say that habits of eating terribly without being mindful as a child can lead to a greater chance of being obese as an adult.  And kids have to go through the sugar withdrawals just like an adult does.  So, it's not easy to get on track.

Make a menu weekly, let him help you prepare food.  You take control back over and he should start to benefit from that.

Oh, and my older son has sensory issues and motor planning difficulties which have always impacted his eating. Chewing meat was very difficult and he would choke.  Textures and tastes created issues.  We worked on it. Dips help as all kids like to dip. Like ranch dressing with some vegetables.  Dip into dressing, hey, he's eating carrots.  It's a start. There is also a book called "food chaining" with instructions of how to increase what a kid will eat. I found that really helpful.  
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Thanks for sharing your experience.
My nephew never eats something healthy, if he doesn't get what he wants he gets angry and doesn't eat anything at all. My family can't do anything because my nephew's mother is his facilitator, she works all day long and she gives him money to buy junk food and when she arrives she brings him junk food, so she's killing his son slowly.
My nephew is really skinny and he doesn't care about his health because my family and I talk with him about his health but he doesn't care
Kids can go a fairly long time without eating and be just fine. When my kids are "acting up" and being difficult about a dinner I've made that they have no reason not to eat, I say okay.  But no snacks.  They can go to bed hungry.  They won't starve. We are self preserving. Kids will eat if hungry enough.

But since he is your nephew and his mother doesn't care, there is nothing you can do.  What will happen to him?  Well, he just will likely be overweight as an adult and have issues like heart disease and such if he is predisposed.  

What does his mother say?  What is her excuse for not creating a better situation for her child?
His mother doesn't say anything about it, if I want to talk with her about it, she gets mad
This is a situation you can't win if you don't have the mother on your side.  Some families might have a family intervention if things get so bad the child's health is being endangered.  But I grew up in the 1950's and 60's, and I have to tell you, pretty much everyone in the US ate horribly then.  Society was very regimented back then for adults.  They had grown up in the depression and lived through WWII and were happy they had anything to eat.  They believed the marketing that was put out then because they believed everything pretty much that the wealthy and powerful told them.  New mothers were told -- by doctors no less -- that formula was healthier than breast feeding, which was propaganda formed by Nestles, not science.  We ate meat at every meal, because if you could afford to do that you did it, it meant you weren't poor anymore.  We ate white bread and white rice and fried food and lots of sugar and food that wasn't close to being food.  While most of us weren't obese when we were young -- far from it -- that generation became the cancer generation, and us kids grew up with a lot of teeth problems.  Arthritis from eating all that pro-inflammatory food caught up to them.  Then there was the rebellion of the late Fifties and into the Sixties and continuing today but not necessarily winning the day that brings us to having a nutrition forum here.  There is no way to have a healthy hamburger -- it's actually impossible to have lean beef.  What we call lean is still loaded with the wrong kind of fat no matter how you prepare it because cows are a human-invented animal and are raised to be full of fat.  It's why we like beef but it's never good for you.  But that doesn't mean you should never eat it, it means not often.  But again, when I grew up, beef was usually the meal.  It didn't stop my generation from living long lives, though many were lost to cancer, but it did mean a lot of those years were spent sick.  So again, it gets you when you get older because youth compensates for a lot.  I don't eat that way anymore, and I stopped eating that way when I got to college.  Your nephew will eventually be making his own decisions.  But how much what's going on while he's growing can't be predicted but can be supposed, and it won't be good.  This is my experience.  But it's not your child so don't know how much you can practically do about it.  Peace.
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