NYT Contributor Is Terrified of New Childhood Obesity Guidelines for All the Wrong Reasons
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. . .
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 and their neighbors not just fatter but sicker, with 88 percent of adults suffering from some form of metabolic dysfunction. . .
Sole-Smith’s solution to childhood obesity, however, is to recalibrate objective standards of health. In keeping with the modern “body positivity” movement and the left’s habit of redefining truth and terms to fit their perception of reality, the Times guest columnist thinks we would all be healthier if we just stopped calling obesity and other health detriments unhealthy. (Read more from “NYT Contributor Is Terrified of New Childhood Obesity Guidelines for All the Wrong Reasons” HERE)
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