The Flawed Messages to Parents about Food and Weight

After recently talking to an acquaintance about her daughter’s eating, I was reminded of the pressures on families to adhere to the societal mores around food and weight. It’s no wonder that so many children are essentially raised to have eating disorders.

The biggest disservice our culture provides is couching these pressures in hackneyed science and medicine. There are several examples that trick even the most well-meaning parents into questionable practices. 

The erroneous research into sugar as an addictive substance has created communal terror of this component of food. Yes, the human body is not designed to process the added sugars in all sorts of foods, but sugar is not the new cocaine or oxycodone. Understanding the risks of consuming too much sugar while also figuring out how one’s own (or one’s child’s) body reacts to sugar is important, but using this information to ban sugar from your child’s diet is troublesome. It only reinforces the child’s desire to eat sugar and creates a mystique that makes sugar the forbidden fruit and the most desired food.

The increase in children’s weight in recent years has become a public health obsession. However, the guidelines pediatricians use to manage weight as a medical indicator for health risk do not take into account the child’s overall health. As a result, many children are branded overweight and parents are charged to change that child’s eating and exercise habits or else fear the shame of a fat child. The line between fat phobia and sound medicine is not so clear. Often the well-intentioned doctor only encourages the possibility of an eating disorder.

Last adults who likely discourage peer pressure at school condone the shaming of fat children. Since being fat is considered a personal flaw or weakness, parents expect their fat children to be teased and, perhaps subconsciously, blame the child for the situation.

It’s easy to see how a child can internalize these messages about weight when they come from doctors, science, adults and peers. The message is clear: being fat is a personal flaw and losing weight is the only way to rectify the situation. Parents need to be focused on their child’s emotional and psychological well-being and not the number on the scale.