A guest columnist published an op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday about how the new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on treating childhood obesity have left her terrified. And she should be terrified.
The comprehensive overhaul of recommendations for treating kids with obesity includes a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and bariatric surgery, an operation that should be the last resort for even the most severe cases.
But Virginia Sole-Smith, the author of “Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture,” which comes out in April, is terrified for all the wrong reasons. According to Sole-Smith, the medical community’s remaining stigmas against excessive weight are problematic.
“The guidelines are rooted in a premise that should have been rejected long ago: that weight loss is the best path to health and happiness,” Sole-Smith wrote. “The academy’s guidelines are the latest sally in the war on obesity that health care providers, public health officials and the general public have waged to shrink our bodies for over 40 years. The approach hasn’t worked; Americans, including kids, are not getting thinner.”
She’s right that the kids are not all right. But she’s dangerously wrong to claim Americans should raise the white flag on the issue. On the contrary, Americans should be alarmed that the population’s obesity epidemic has swollen to such epic proportions that 1 in 5 children is clinically obese. Americans should be disturbed that by even the “healthy” diet standards their government recommends, their food is still leaving them
