Should parents lose custody of super obese kids?

[Smiles302]

That Jamie Oliver TV show was frightening. We don't have school lunches here (Ireland). I could not imagine eating the weird packaged food he showed...

I think a lot of it is the mentality. I can't imagine considering the junk that comes in "just-add-water" boxes to be food. I was horrified when my American house-mate got a care-package full of boxes of random "dinners".

Pasta with a cheese sauce thing that you just put in a pot, add water and call it dinner. It looked so disgusting.

Personally I think America would do well from "healthy" and "Not-healthy" stickers on everything that wasn't fresh food.
You be pedantic and argue that defining "healthy" is impossible but you would do well to simply consider x amount of salt to be excessive and unhealthy, x amount of (bad, processed veg etc) fat to be unhealthy for one meal and x amount of sugar to be insane.

The people who need the help are the people who appear to think it's fine to feed their kids Mcdonalds twice a week and random convenience food every other day.
It's not easy to fatten the kids that I know, it's hard enough to kept them fed. The parents of super obese children must be doing something terribly wrong.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Personally I think America would do well from "healthy" and "Not-healthy" stickers on everything that wasn't fresh food.
You be pedantic and argue that defining "healthy" is impossible but you would do well to simply consider x amount of salt to be excessive and unhealthy, x amount of (bad, processed veg etc) fat to be unhealthy for one meal and x amount of sugar to be insane.

I think that should be true of all countries. Here in England (don't know if you get it in Ireland?) we have nutrition ring stickers. It shoes you the amount of salt, sugar, fat etc in both number and colour code (green for ok, yellow for not good, red for very bad).

I think explicit warnings on food along the lines of cigarette packages should be required by law.

 

[thegreenlaser]

One issue that I could see arising from a law like this is more kids ending up with anorexia and other eating disorders. If parents are obsessed with keeping their kids from getting fat because they don't want to lose their kid, I don't see it as a stretch for the kid to take the "I need to stay skinny" message to the other extreme. It already happens quite a bit as it is.

I think that we really have to be careful in limiting laws like this to the absolutely extreme cases where a child is in imminent danger. If parents start thinking that if their kids don't turn out perfectly, they'll be seen as bad parents and have their kids taken away from them, they're naturally going to be more cautious. Kids can sense that and they often either get obsessive about making money or getting high grades or staying skinny to a point where it hurts them, or they get very rebellious. (Anyone seen a helicopter parent in action? It's usually not pretty) Even though the law itself might be reasonable, I think it's very easy for parents to be scared of losing their children and over-reacting.

 

[Drakkith]

Greenlaser I think that everyone agrees that on both ends of the scale, whether too skinny or too fat, that we need to intervene only when it is at a dangerous level. I don't agree that this would cause much of an issue with anorexia and such, nor with parents worrying about losing their kids. And it isn't like the parents wouldn't get a warning, especially with obesity. Unlike being too skinny, obesity doesn't kill you in days once you get in the danger zone.

Note that being too skinny to the point of danger IS starvation. Being obese is not, so it can be a little difficult to compare the two. A person who is in danger of dying because of starvation needs IMMEDIATE medical care, while an obese person does not.

Because of this many people don't see obesity as a harmful issue. Just because something doesn't kill you quickly doesn't mean you should ignore it!

I do agree with you about people over reacting, but I think that relatively few would react in such a way as to starve their kids. I think the biggest issue would be whether the law is legal or not.

I myself am torn between safety of the kids and further laws imposed on society. As I have asked before, when does safety need to stop in the name of freedom?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Indeed. And what about other dangerous activities? One of the most dangerous things kids are subjected to is the automobile. Next is water.
http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_Kids.html

Half of all car accidents involve alcohol. So by default this puts alcohol at the top of the list as a child killer. By the nanny logic, shouldn't alcohol just be banned? Is a drink really worth the life of a child?

 

[Smiles302]

A food scientist's thoughts on the actual paper

The authors weren't writing about removing kids in homes with excessive junk food and XBOXs, and a few pounds that some chart or physician might suggest they ought to lose. The authors were writing about "severe pediatric obesity", which they defined as a BMI beyond the 99th percentile, and where interventions designed to help those kids' parents failed to help their children

The authors argue that extreme pediatric obesity can be life threatening, that it can cause immediate and potentially irreversible medical complications, and that it can markedly shorten life expectancy. Surprisingly, not mentioned by the authors is the psychosocial impact of severe obesity on children, where studies have documented terrible bullying and stigmatization which in turn impact on a child's mental health and education.

According to American federal laws child abuse and neglect are defined as,

"any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm ... or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm"
The authors estimate that for a child to be in the 99th or higher percentile for weight that they are likely consuming a minimum of 1,000 more calories per day. Put in some perspective, that would be the equivalent of 2-3 additional meals worth of calories daily.

Link to full post: http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/07/can-childhood-obesity-warrant-child.html"

Nobody is arguing kids that are a bit pudgy be taken away, only severely obese children whose health is clearly at risk.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Indeed. And what about other dangerous activities? One of the most dangerous things kids are subjected to is the automobile. Next is water.
http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_Kids.html

Half of all car accidents involve alcohol. So by default this puts alcohol at the top of the list as a child killer. By the nanny logic, shouldn't alcohol just be banned? Is a drink really worth the life of a child?

As Smiles302 points out the idea refers to the extremes. To use the alcohol analogy it would be advisable to take away the kids of parents who give kids excessive amounts to alcohol to drink whenever they want, or let them drive at young ages.

Nobody is talking about banning activities, it's about preventing parents damaging their child's health with extremely bad diets.