This One Will Get Some People Spun Up
Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Children's Diets, writes Harriet Brown in today's New York Times. It's about sending the wrong messages by forcing a "bad food-good food" narrative. It's also about raging nanny-statism and the paving stones on the way to, well, you know.
A look at what's happening on the state level confirms this. In Arkansas, for instance, children's report cards now include their B.M.I., or body mass index, along with their grades. The governor, Mike Huckabee recently lost more than 100 pounds and is passionate about stopping the "obesity epidemic." Maryland is considering a similar standard.
Never mind that B.M.I. is only a measure of height against weight and does not take into account muscle mass, body type or other factors. (Tom Cruise has a B.M.I. of 31, which puts him in the "obese" category.)
"You're setting kids up to feel bad about how they are," says Dr. Nancy Krebs, chairwoman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Nutrition and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado.
Such efforts usually fail, making weight problems and eating disorders worse. A recent Internet discussion board among families with anorexic and bulimic children identified middle school health classes, which focus on weight, as the No. 1 trigger for their teenagers' disorders.
The food wars are being fueled by our emotionally fraught relationships with food, and by increasingly hysterical rhetoric.
We often hear, for instance, of a rising tide of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, especially in children. But the science behind such pronouncements is shaky. A study of nearly 3,000 children presented at the American Diabetes Association's 2005 conference suggested that a third of the children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with being overweight, were later found to have Type 1 diabetes, linked to genetics.
Abigail C. Saguy, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies media framing of obesity, says it's hard to know if rates are truly rising, since no nationally representative data are available.
One study of teenagers in the Cincinnati area found that the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes went from 7 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1982 to 7.2 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1994 — a difference that could easily be a result of better diagnostics.
"The term 'epidemic' refers to the rapid and episodic onset of infectious diseases and is associated with fear of sudden widespread death," Dr. Saguy says. In reality, she adds, new research shows no significant difference in death rates between "normal" and overweight Americans; mortality rates rise only for those with a B.M.I. exceeding 35 — only 8 percent of the country. (Links removed)
The use of junk science and feel-good notions to set public policy has always been a real issue. This is a bad way to do business, folks. Read the whole thing. Ms. Brown makes a lot of sense. (But I'll bet her inbox is already smoking from the responses she's getting!)
By Harriet Brown, Monday, 5 June , 2006 @ 8:43 am
You’re not kidding! My inbox is still smoking!
By Gaius, Monday, 5 June , 2006 @ 8:52 am
Can I call ‘em or what?