weigh-2-go.org

Here’s a blog post on the Huffington Post that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Do We Need a Fattitude Adjustment?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Here’s the comment I wrote:

Amazing, the diversity of viewpoints here. Some questions not yet considered:

– I agree that parents’ behavior is at issue for childhood obesity. But “lack of willpower” doesn’t explain the phenomenon, either. Millions of adults genuinely try, but fail, to lose weight. Why?

– Yes, parents “should” control their kids’ eating, but we don’t live in a society where parents have that control. Kids feed themselves now, candy machines are everywhere, school lunches are filled with junk, and parents are too busy to cook nutritious meals with real ingredients. Fast food fits the lifestyle of parents *and* their children. How do we fix *that*?

– Sugar in its many forms is hard to escape in our food supply, and it’s an addictive substance that causes the brain to want more. (If you don’t believe this, try living without any processed/packaged food for 2 days.)

Dr. Katz, thank you for articulating an intelligent response to the “rock and a hard place” we find ourselves trapped in, as we work to fight obesity, not the people who are obese.

By the way, if the official definition of obesity is the 95th percentile, what happens when 20% of kids are obese? Do we need a definition based on symptoms instead of statistics?

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