Are Parents Responsible for Kids Getting Fat?
I just came across an article on childhood obesity in USA Today. The main thrust of the article is that overweight kids learn their bad habits from their parents.
Keith Ayoob, a registered dietician at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York is quoted as saying he has never met children who have better eating habits than their parents. "Parents are, hands down, the biggest influence on their kids. They need to be good role models"
While I agree, parents need to be good role models and set limits, I also believe that there are so many influences in kids lives today, ranging from TV, to the internet, to peers in play groups and day care, that placing all of the responsibility and blame on parents seems naive to me.
I wrote a few weeks ago about Advergaming. The food industry's use of branded video games to engage kids around their products. I think it is a safe bet that they are not spending millions on these efforts because they merely want to entertain kids.
Yes, parents should prepare good meals for their kids. Yes, they should sit down and eat with them at least two meals a day. And yes, they need to control the amount of TV their kids watch and how much time they spend on the internet.
But alot of the parents I know are both working and can barely keep their heads above water financially and with respect to time.
Although I am a big proponent of healthy eating at home. I believe we need to take a broad view of how we are going to get a handle on the obesity epidemic. It will take personal and parental responsibility, but it is also going to take changes in food policy, school curriculae, and much more.
Elizabeth Ward sums it up nicely in the article when she says "Everyone needs to be aware that the deck is stacked against children for having a healthy weight. Our society is set up to have our kids grow up overweight, which is why we need to be vigilant.....All of us need to do something about it. When it comes to this issue, we cannot put a Band-Aid on it anymore."
The article closes on a hopeful note with pediatrician Marc Jacobsen, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' task force on obesity saying: It's on the front of everybody's radar screen. There is a huge outpouring of commitment from schools, government, public health agencies, private industry, medical groups and parents....It's something we've caused...I don't see any reason why we can't make the changes needed to reverse it.
I hope he is right.