Of Cats and Kids

Obesity: The parental guilt frontier

Posted by: Carol Lombardi

Monday, September 10, 2007 10:52 PM

The News-Gazette recently ran an editorial about childhood obesity, urging parents to take the lead in dealing with their own kids. The editorial followed the Obesity 2007 report issued by The Trust for America's Health, which found that, among other things, Illinois children are 14th in the nation in terms of heft.

As a parent, I've found the problem with addressing healthy lifestyle issues with my daughter is that she wants to do what I do, not what I say. So if I choose to park myself in front of the TV shoveling yummy junk in my mouth while telling her to eat some grapes and go play outside, it's not going to help. Parents have to walk the walk. But that's not quite enough.

For several hours a day my daughter is not under my direct supervision. Because education is mandatory, I think the schools do have some responsibility here. Elementary students in Unit 4, in a given week, can dine on cheese sticks, BBQ Ribettes (which come from pigettes?), corn dogs, chicken nuggets and pizza. Even if the serving size/fat content of these lunches is regulated, do we really want our kids to think that a regular diet of this type of food would be healthy? (Note: My kid brings a lunchbox, but I'm just saying...)

For concerned parents, the Unit 4 page also provides a link to "Nutrition Explorations - the new way to teach and learn nutrition." It links to a site provided by the Dairy Council - hardly an objective source. Shockingly, the site pushes a lot of dairy. How about this fruit and veggie site, courtesy of our tax dollars, instead?

Anyway, for parents who are looking for a place to start, there are quite a few factors that contribute to childhood obesity: video gaming, mother's gestational diabetes, adenovirus-36, laziness, mindless eating, obese parents, food restriction, poverty, lack of sleep, TV ads,
TV viewing, and pop, just to name a few.

There's plenty of parental guilt to go around - help yourself.

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