I'm not fat...I'm festively plump
I was browsing Google News today as I always do to kill time at work. I stumbled across this headline and almost burst out laughing:
American Children Getting Too Fat For Car Safety Seats
Apparently over 250,000 big-boned American children under the age of 6 exceed the maximum weight limit of standard car-safety seats for their age groups. Little Johnny may only be six, but he weighs in at a 10-year-old level. Apparently you shouldn't put a Frosty in your kid's bottle instead of formula (but I thought they were both just diary). Actually this sounds a whole lot worse than it really is. While it is true that the protection offered by a weight-exceeded safety seat is largely diminished, such children inherently have more built in padding to protect them in case of an accident.
This is just the latest news story talking about America's growing obesity problem. And it is a legimate concern, given that according to the site by the American Obesity Association well over half of Americans are overweight (64.5%) and nearly a third (30.5%) are obese. Heart disease, the risk of which is greatly increased by obesity, remains the number 1 killer in America (~700,000 in 2002) and causes more deaths than the numbers 2 and 3 (cancer and stroke) combined.
This is the part of the post where I get to come off as a complete asshole. If obesity is such a huge problem in America, why was there (at least when I was younger) such a backlash about messing with kid's body image? Magazines were evil because they portrayed unrealistic bodies of models. Barbie was evil for being impossibly proportioned. I distinctly remember having to sit through lectures about the dangers of anorexia when I was in middle school. But doing a quick search on anorexia, I found a page on emedicine.com that says that anorexia affects about 1 out of 100 adolescent females mostly in the middle-to-upper socioeconomic groups. The mortality rate ranges from 5-10%. It seems to me, that while it is bad that people get such an eating disorder, America is way the hell on the other end of the problem spectrum. One percent of rich adolesent girls is sure a whole lot less than a third of all Americans. Shouldn't we be telling our kids that they need to look a little more like the magazine models and less like Santa? That while Barbie or GI Joe may be unachievable, they should be more of a goal to aim for than say the Hamburgler? Telling a kid they're fat may hurt their self-esteem, but at least they might be motivated to actually try and fit their fat ass in their safety seat.
< /done sounding like an asshole >
American Children Getting Too Fat For Car Safety Seats
Apparently over 250,000 big-boned American children under the age of 6 exceed the maximum weight limit of standard car-safety seats for their age groups. Little Johnny may only be six, but he weighs in at a 10-year-old level. Apparently you shouldn't put a Frosty in your kid's bottle instead of formula (but I thought they were both just diary). Actually this sounds a whole lot worse than it really is. While it is true that the protection offered by a weight-exceeded safety seat is largely diminished, such children inherently have more built in padding to protect them in case of an accident.
This is just the latest news story talking about America's growing obesity problem. And it is a legimate concern, given that according to the site by the American Obesity Association well over half of Americans are overweight (64.5%) and nearly a third (30.5%) are obese. Heart disease, the risk of which is greatly increased by obesity, remains the number 1 killer in America (~700,000 in 2002) and causes more deaths than the numbers 2 and 3 (cancer and stroke) combined.
This is the part of the post where I get to come off as a complete asshole. If obesity is such a huge problem in America, why was there (at least when I was younger) such a backlash about messing with kid's body image? Magazines were evil because they portrayed unrealistic bodies of models. Barbie was evil for being impossibly proportioned. I distinctly remember having to sit through lectures about the dangers of anorexia when I was in middle school. But doing a quick search on anorexia, I found a page on emedicine.com that says that anorexia affects about 1 out of 100 adolescent females mostly in the middle-to-upper socioeconomic groups. The mortality rate ranges from 5-10%. It seems to me, that while it is bad that people get such an eating disorder, America is way the hell on the other end of the problem spectrum. One percent of rich adolesent girls is sure a whole lot less than a third of all Americans. Shouldn't we be telling our kids that they need to look a little more like the magazine models and less like Santa? That while Barbie or GI Joe may be unachievable, they should be more of a goal to aim for than say the Hamburgler? Telling a kid they're fat may hurt their self-esteem, but at least they might be motivated to actually try and fit their fat ass in their safety seat.
< /done sounding like an asshole >
posted by boywondre at 6:00 PM
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