Fat is criminal, and parents of obese children are abusers. The youngsters must be seized by the state and placed in foster homes for their own safety.
That’s the eerie message recently delivered by some members of the American medical community in a provocative opinion piece published in the reputable Journal of the American Medical Association.
Its authors are joining a quiet chorus of supporters who believe the U.S. government should be given powers of a Super Nanny and split families by taking away obese children and placing them in protective custody.
“Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child,” said Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital in Boston.
This suggestion is reprehensible and frightening. Suggesting the problem of obesity begins at home is courting legislation that would erode the rights of parents to be parents. It would be a serious invasion in a free and democratic society.
Despite what the medical journal says, a recent study suggests a child’s healthy lifestyle in the U.S. is determined by dollars and cents.
Published in the journal Health Affairs, the study says good health comes with a price — a bill some of the working poor cannot afford.
While childhood obesity is a serious health concern in North America, education must be paramount on the government’s agenda — not more power to dictate how parents should be raising their children. Such power could lead to further problems and questions as to how far can a country go in playing Super Nanny?
The medical journal’s opinion piece seems innocent enough, stating such powers would be used “only in extreme cases.”
Ludwig said the point isn’t to blame parents, but rather to act in the best interests of the child and get them the help that their parents cannot provide, which still seems like laying blame.
State intervention, said Ludwig, “ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible.”
But Art Caplan, a bioethicist with the University of Pennsylvania, disagrees. The debate, said Caplan, risks putting too much blame on parents.
Obese children, he said, are victims of advertising, marketing, peer pressure and bullying — things a parent can’t control.
“If you’re going to change a child’s weight, your going to have to change all of (those factors).”
The medical journal’s opinion piece fails to address Caplan’s concerns and the cost of keeping children healthy.
About two million U.S. children are considered “extremely obese” and lacking proper nutrition. But proper diet comes with a price — which is out of reach for many American families. It’s argued that the U.S. government should do more to help consumers eat properly, especially among the poor.
In 2010, the U.S. established new guidelines for healthy eating, urging citizens to eat more foods containing potassium, dietary fibre, vitamin D and calcium. But the Health Affair’s study said such a diet would raise the grocery bill.
Lead researcher Pablo Monsivais of the University of Washington said introducing more potassium in a diet, for example, would up the annual food bill by about US$380.
Hilary Seligman, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says “almost 15 per cent of households in America say they don’t have enough money to eat the way they want to eat.”
It’s assumed the poor eat cheap food because it tastes good. On the contrary, says Seligman, they would make better choices if they could afford to. Recent estimates show about 49 million Americans make food decisions based on cost.
Addressing the problem of obesity is complicated. Taking children away from their parents is a simplistic and wrong-headed response.
Rick Zemanek is an Advocate editor.