Should Your Child Be Dieting?
While a controversial new children’s book has stirred up debate on the d-word, experts advocate healthy eating and exercise habits over quick-fix weight loss for kids
Kids have cell phones, CrossFit, and beauty pageants—why not diets, too? Child and adolescent weight loss is the topic of a controversial new book called Maggie Goes on a Diet, due out October 16. Targeting kids ages 4 to 12, the book chronicles—via a series of rhymes—the journey of an overweight and insecure 14-year-old girl as she transforms herself into a normal-size soccer star by eating right and exercising.
While it sounds like a source of sensible advice, the book’s forthcoming release has spawned a frenzy of criticism across news outlets, blogs, and Amazon.com, where commenters are outraged with the notion of familiarizing preschool and elementary-age children with the concept of dieting, and worried that the book will trigger disordered eating among impressionable kids. Eating disorders in children younger than 12 increased by 119% between 2000 and 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Experts have universally condemned the book, arguing that it sends the message that being thin will automatically make you happy, healthy, and popular. Paul M. Kramer, the book’s author, who has no background in medicine or child nutrition, writes, “Losing the weight was not only good for Maggie’s health. Maggie was so much happier and was also very proud of herself.” And later: “More and more people were beginning to know Maggie by name. Playing soccer gave Maggie popularity and fame.”
Kramer defended his work on Good Morning America in August, explaining that the book is about changing kids’ eating and exercise habits, but that the word “diet” was used in the title to make the book more relatable for readers. “If I entitled the book Maggie Eats Healthy, somebody in a bookstore looking at a title Maggie Gets Healthy is really not going to identify with somebody who has been overweight or who has health problems,” Kramer said on the show.
Targeting Childhood Obesity with Tact
When approximately 12.5 million (17%) of children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 are classified as obese, according to the CDC, the epidemic can’t be ignored—but it can be addressed in a manner appropriate to maturing young people who are in the process of developing attitudes about their body image. “Weight—especially excess weight—is a sensitive issue in our society an has to be dealt with carefully in order to avoid damaging a child’s self-esteem,” says Susan J. Woolford, MD, MPH, medical director of the Pediatric Comprehensive Weight Management Center at the University of Michigan.
Video: What’s at the root of childhood obesity?
“I think it’s best to stay away from the world ‘diet’ and to actually not engage in dieting,” Woolford says. “Diets are generally thought of as something people do for a temporary period of time until they achieve a certain weight, at which point they’d come off the diet,” she adds, pointing out that yo-yo dieting makes it harder over time to achieve a healthy weight and easier to pack on excess pounds.
In fact, research shows that when healthy foods are the focus, kids tend to weigh less. An Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine study tracked 2,327 girls from age 9 to 19. Those who followed the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which emphasizes fruits and vegetables, lean meats, low-fat dairy, and whole grains without strict portion control, had an average BMI of 24.4, which is considered healthy, while those whose diets least closely resembled the DASH eating plan were classified as overweight, with an average BMI of 26.3.
On the other hand, diet foods and portion control don’t always spell long-term weight loss. In a study of 113 teens conducted by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and published in the journal Obesity, obese adolescents with an average age of 15 drank SlimFast shakes in place of their regular meals. While the study subjects lost weight in the short term, the diet shakes did not help the teens continue or maintain their weight loss until the end of the yearlong study.
Search: What are the best lunches to pack for back-to-school?
Instead of dieting, Woolford advocates lifestyle changes. “For example, if you increase vegetable intake for your family, that’s something you’d want to do indefinitely,” she says. “It’s concerning to have young child focused on weight, diets, and calorie counting; it’s much more advantageous to think about being healthy.” While obesity puts kids at risk for type 2 diabetes, breathing problems such as sleep apnea and asthma, joint and musculoskeletal problems, and social and psychological problems like discrimination and low self-esteem—concepts that kids might not understand—even young children grasp the general idea of being healthy, and parents can make changes geared toward this goal without negatively affecting their child’s self-esteem, Woolford says.
Hmmmm. Not encouraging. Ideally, yes, the message that comes across should be "health," not "diet." However, in this society, "destination: thin" is the loud voice drowning anything else out.
