American Academy of Pediatrics makes major shift in recommendations on overweight and obesity
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The American Academy of Pediatrics announced last week that it was radically changing its guidelines for treatment of overweight and obesity in children and teens.  Specifically, it recommends DEemphasizing dieting and weight loss while avoiding any kind of public shaming and encouraging families not to engage in fat shaming, and emphasizing exercise and nutrition. Why? Because those first three tactics are correlated with higher rates of obesity and higher rates of eating disorders, while the latter are correlated with actual better health overall. You can find a quite decent summary/explanation of the revisions in this Psychology Today overview by Alexis Conason, a clinical psychologist who specializes in body image and eating disorders.

This is very promising. It was only two years ago that the American Medical Association joined numerous other organizations in defining obesity as a disease and reinforcing a diagnostic and treatment picture of obesity that lends itself to reductivism in how medical professionals and the public deal with obesity. In particular, this Editor recently drew reader’s attention to a very fine Nursing Clio overview of the history of obesity at the pediatrician’s office.  Feminist bioethicists have long been concerned about how a toxic braid of stigma, medicine, and parenting motivated by concern for fat kids contributes to body image issues, disordered eating, and poor health rather than good health. This policy may not be perfect, but it is a major improvement in how to actually treat whole persons so that in doing so, medical professionals do not impose additional harms.

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This image shows US data on eating disorders, dieting industry, and children’s attitudes on fatness. TEST SUMMARY OF IMAGE: 13 million Americans binge eat and 10 million women + 1 million men battle anorexia or bulimia. The average American woman is 5’4″ tall and 140 lbs; the average female fashion model is 5’11” and 110 lbs. The dieting industry takes in $40 billion a year. There has been an 18% increase in hospitalizations for eating disorders overall from 1999 to 2006, 37% increase for men in that same period…. and a 119% increase for children under 12 years old in that time period. 80% of all 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. 42% of all 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner. IMAGE SOURCE: CNN, 2012

IJFAB bloggers and authors in the journal have written critically of the treatment of obesity by professional organizations, and on food and eating more generally. Want to read more?  Check these out.

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