| Malnourishing children = bad public policy |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|12:23 am] |
Since I wrote the Monica Grenfell post a few of days ago, I've been poking around a corner of the Internet known as the fatosphere. It turns out that in recent months a lot of self-described fat people have been banding together and producing some very smart blogs. The main aim of the movement, apart from providing a support network, is to challenge the common assumption that everyone who is overweight must also be unfit, sloppy and undisciplined.
It turns out to be a rather refreshing community. Folks there talk positively about their bodies, which is something you don't hear that often from people of any size elsewhere on the Internet. In fact, when you lurk somewhere like Shapely Prose for a little while, you start to look around you and realize just how much toxic crap about body image our culture spews at us every day.
You also start to squirm when you realize that you may be contributing to the problem. I mean, we're all surrounded by fat people who work out harder and eat better than we do but aren't turning into thin people. Yet somehow there's this pervasive insidious belief that they must have some kind of moral failing.
My new favourite blog is Junkfood Science by Sandy Szwarc. It demonstrates that a lot of what we think we know about diet and nutrition is either oversimplified to the point of uselessness or seriously garbled. If Queen's Park had passed Bill 8, The Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act last week instead of today, I would have applauded. Now, I'm not so sure it's useful except as a politcal placebo. In fact, stampeding to force limited diets of "healthy" foods on kids can actually do them serious harm. Swarc reports that a recent study found that British nursery schools were malnourishing toddlers in the mistaken belief that a low-fat, low-calorie diet would be good for them. See also her essay here.
All this is making me do some serious spring head cleaning. More later, perhaps. |
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