Saturday, October 20, 2007

Fat camp for under-fives in Britain

This article is just so wrong, I'm finding myself speechless link
I mean, people, get a grip here. These kids aren't even school age yet, and you're going to subject them to the fat-phobia they will face once they do start school before they ever get there? And kids this young don't understand making healthy choices about food or what constitutes a moderate amount of exercise. All they're going to hear is that they're fat, they eat too much of the wrong kind of food, and they need to be thinner to be a worthwhile member of society. They're being set up for a lifetime of failure by your standards, and those standards are not even realistic or attainable by the vast majority of children who are still growing. Do you even care that by reducing the body fat of toddlers you can be limiting their growth and intelligence? Do you even care that no one is sure what other problems children who diet at this early an age will have years down the road? Probably not, because all you can think of is your aesthetic of thin is beautiful=healthy, fat is ugly=unhealthy.
Every body is uniquely different. Thin children don't necessarily grow up to be thin adults, and fat children don't necessarily grow up to be fat adults. Some do, some don't, but I can guarantee you that messing with a child's weight trying to lower it is going to set them up to be a fat adult since it's impossible to stay on a restricted calorie diet forever (choosing the 'right' foods usually goes hand-in-hand with restricting calories). And the jury is still out on what the 'right' foods are.
To pile insult on top of injury, this will be recorded by ITV for a series next year.

The Carnegie International Weight Loss Camp, based in Leeds, was the first residential weight-loss centre in Europe. It has helped more than 1,000 teenagers.

On average, the children lost two to four pounds a week and their fitness levels were boosted by a fifth. Even after the course ended, around 75 per cent managed to sustain their weight loss.

Prof. Gately, who is starting the fat camps for toddlers, has been running weight loss camps for teens since 1999. I want to know how many of those teens are still maintaining their weight loss after 8 years, 7 years, 6 years. Bet you won't find those numbers published anywhere (cynicism runs rampant here). Because he was supposedly so successful with teens, he thinks it would be better to stop TEH FAT at an even earlier age. The hubris of these people who think that fat should be eradicated from the face of the earth is astounding.

1 comment:

  1. Ahhhhh! This makes my blood boil! These poor, poor, children.

    ReplyDelete

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