Fat Shaming and Family Dinners

The headline blares from the Daily Mail:

Over half American kids will be obese by 35: Report reveals more than 57% of children are dangerously unhealthy

• Current eating and exercise trends are making children unhealthy
• Even those who are currently normal weight face high obesity risk
• The study by Harvard University warned the boom in adult obesity in a couple of decades will cost America billions more in healthcare costs

To be fair, if half of America’s children are still children when they are 35, obesity will be the least of their problems.

But, I digress.

At least, we have overcome fat-shaming. Didn’t the Tiger Mom declare that she felt no guilt whatever for telling her daughters to lose a bit weight, even if that meant calling them “fatty.” As Amy Chua put it, America’s parents refuse to fat-shame, but are bringing up children who have serious weight problems. Duh?

How did we get to this point?

Julie Gunlock suggests that it might—it just might—have something to do with Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity crusade. Could it be that the campaign to force children to eat what Michelle Obama wanted them to eat has failed? I know it's hard to believe.

Gunlock comments on the Daily Mail story:

That's interesting considering all the work Former First Lady Michelle Obama did to reduce the number of overweight children. She completely revamped the school lunch program (which resulted in inedible food being served to kids and a massive and very embarrassing food waste problem). She launched "Let's Move" in an effort to get kids moving. She beat up on food companies for producing what consumers demand and backed food activist demands to add more and costly labels to foods and restaurant menus. She pressured grocery stores to stop stocking certain food items and even criticized advertisers for putting food ads on television.

What went wrong?

Gunlock suggests that the Obama administration tried to solve the problem by giving the government power over people’s lives. It took eating out of the home and family, thus undermining family structure. So much for family dinner or family breakfast:

Instead, the Obama administration sideline parents and encourage them to pass off their child's nutritional development to the state—in this case the school lunch lady. In fact, under the Obama Administration, the school dinner program expanded from a small federal pilot program serving 13 urban areas to a national program serving all schools. So, now, kids can have three full meals served at school--breakfast lunch and dinner.

And what has that gotten us? More chubby kids.

Apparently, the Obama administration failed to notice that consuming victuals is a family ritual.  And that children control their appetite best when they regularly eat with other members of their family. It is not just a question of calories and globules of far. For undermining the family and especially the security a child feels when he has a consistent and structured mealtime the Obama administration failed America’s children and pushed them toward adult obesity:

There's a high cost to parents ceding their child's nutrition--and kids are paying that price. Childhood obesity studies overwhelmingly show that family meals, limiting television viewing, and getting kids to bed at a reasonable hour are the real keys to helping kids eat right and maintain a healthy weight. A home-packed meal is a part of that.

So maybe, given these latest grim childhood obesity numbers we can hold off on yet again expanding these useless government feeding programs and do something new and cutting edge--encourage parents to take responsibility for feeding their own children.