Garbage in Garbage out

Updated 4.6.2015
This isn't a new sentiment or rant, but it's one I was inspired to write after reading this tripe. It is NOT true that calories or the amount you feed your child doesn't matter. NOR is it true that if you intervene in your child's weight gain while growing that the end point is negative. It doesn't need to be. I raised a (now professional) dancer, I absolutely intervened in her diet choices, both to help her attain her goal and to avoid any eating disorder. It can be done. But it takes consistent effort and monitoring… you know like most of parenting.

So many of these articles are a closed loop. An overweight or obese mother shares her experience and opines that she has freed herself (and her kids) from the tyranny of conventional wisdom. The following is a quote from the article:

That’s trickier to ferret out than you might think. The problem is that even the scientific literature is stuck in a chicken-or-egg discussion about behavior and results. Fat children are at higher risk for diabetes and hypertension, true. But it may be that obesity is a symptom, not a cause, of those diseases—and not always a reliable symptom at that.

No. Just NO. The body compensates until it cannot. And that is true for kids as well. But goodness gracious, if kids are already stressing their bodies ability to compensate… heaven help us.

Obesity is not a symptom of diabetes and hypertension. Neither disease requires obesity to develop, but being obese increases the likelihood of both. Parents control what the kid has to eat, even at school. And I'm going to sound like some ranting republican, but seriously… my kid wouldn't eat the school lunches either… and SO I FED HIM MYSELF. I sent him to school each day with a bagged lunch. And nothing complicated either. A sandwich and a cookie and something else I thought he might eat (he's horribly picky, even to this day).

Sure it's easier to feed your kid ultra-processed crap, or microwave some frozen shit for the family in the evening. But it's also easy to boil some pasta and dump some sauce (even out of a jar) on top of it. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Feeding your family is not hard in this country, even on a limited budget. But it DOES mean choosing to spend your time doing that. If you don't want to or won't then OWN it. No one has to cook— but do NOT try to pretend to me that it's impossible to feed your family at home healthily and cheaply. Because I'm calling bovine excrement. Because it IS possible. I did it, my mother and grandmother did it. NOT. Buying it. Just. Not.

Disclaimer