Idolising Children?

The ongoing sensational reporting of research into the eating habits of children is driving me nuts!

“THOUSANDS of school children feast on junk food and fizzy drinks for breakfast, sparking fresh concerns over Australia’s childhood obesity epidemic,” writes Jill Stark in The Age.

There is no reference to the name of the study, who the authors were, or what the sample size was. No basic information that allows the general reader to make an assessment of this claim. Nothing to tell us about who those “one-in-ten” might be and why they have such a terrible diet to begin with..

Blogs always border on being mere immeadiate reaction rants - and that is what this post threatens to be. Needless to say, the broad sweeping brush strokes offered by much of the field of “public health” contribute to poor understanding of obesity and the overused term of “epidemic” does an injustice to children whose self-esteem is crushed by the moralising over weight in western society.

Children shouldn’t be eating junk food for breakfast, yes they need to eat healthy and the scrapping of any programs - like Nutrition Australia’s healthy eating program discussed in the article should be reported with concern. But, the issue of obesity is far more complex than we are yet willing to acknowledge. Easier to just point at the fat kids and say “get thin” - rather than develop a sophisticated idea about body image and weight that acknowledge body mass index and other population health measures do little for the individual child or family whose personal circumstances mean weight is one of the leats of their concerns.