Emphasize healthy alternatives to fight obesity
With National Eating Disorder Awareness Week here, it feels like an appropriate time to take a serious look at the new campaign targeting childhood obesity. It is nearly impossible to walk through our society without being bombarded with advertisements and marketing campaigns, many of which are focused around food. These ads are centered on either buying food, buying diet pills, opening a gym membership, selling current diet fads, and most recently, tugging at the heart strings of parents everywhere with the campaign to prevent childhood obesity.
Almost daily a commercial runs featuring adorable healthy looking children staring sweetly into the television camera, asking politely for heart disease or Type 2 diabetes. Buses pass by with an oversized picture of a young girl holding up her empty juice cup, signaling her request for a refill of her drink. The purpose of that specific ad reads something along the lines of, “Be careful of what you’re giving to your child,” which draws the correlation between juice drinks and such obesity related diseases as hypertension, strokes, etc.
The motivation behind this campaign is not unjust or unnecessary; rather the information being presented is just too simplified and overgeneralized. A cup of juice, a candy bar, an ice cream cone, or any other specific food, will never single-handedly make any child overweight, or, more extremely, obese. This campaign is marketed very wisely, hitting the target population of parents at their most prominent fears. Focusing the blame of childhood obesity on the parents plays into the majority of parents’ worst fears: worrying that they are not doing everything in their power to make their children’s lives are the best they can be. Though scare tactics do work as a quick and impactive way to reach a large population, the downside is that once people scatter to change their behaviors, there are few other option.
Where are the campaigns introducing low-income families to low-cost meal options with more nutritional balance? Where are the campaigns that address how to incorporate healthy eating and appropriate exercise with the rigorous extracurricular routine and exceptional GPA every child is routed toward from kindergarten? There are grassroots campaigns in many states attacking the childhood obesity epidemic advising steps toward solutions, which focus on proven familial behavior modifications. There is attention paid to family involvement, such as sitting down to at least one meal together daily, family outings and focusing on the prevention of obesity at the core of the child’s self esteem.
Currently, the Center for Disease Control states that 32.9 percent of adults and 18.8 percent of young children are obese. Obesity has been proven to be directly connected with an array of dangerous diseases, such as heart disease and high cholesterol. There is no denying that obesity is a serious problem which has reached epidemic proportions, yet by addressing the problem without taking a deep look at the causes will leave a population with an even greater amount of fear, and little new insight on how to change.
In a culture of fear, misconception and stigmatization around food, it is almost too easy to forget that besides breathing, food and drinking are the two most important factors to sustain life. As an adult, a teacher, an authority, it is the parent’s responsibility to make sure that foods are chosen in moderation and that the diet includes the proper nutrients, but moderation is very different than deprivation. By teaching a child through words, actions and behaviors that certain foods are “bad” or “wrong” or “not healthy” gives a lot of power to the food and a lot of fear to the child.
To target obesity is to target a giant umbrella of various issues. Though many issues result in obesity, the causes have polar differences ranging from poor nutrition to restricted food availability and selection, to emotional issues and stressors, to physical issues such as hormonal imbalances etc. To address all these issues with a campaign on weight loss is just missing the true scope of the situation.
Continuous practice of healthful behaviors and healthy role models, eating a wide variety of foods in appropriate quantities, and a family involvement in both food and recreation are all great points to focus on maintaining healthy habits from childhood through adulthood.
-By Leah Kinder