The "guidelines seek to address lifestyle factors from birth with a recommendation that babies be breastfed, adding that after age 1, children can be given low-fat milk and after age 2 can be given fat-free milk". Is that so? I thought kids need fat for their brains. In fact, there is more and more evidence that the appropriate fat (even saturated fat) is not the issue causing obesity. Read this article about skim milk versus whole milk.
It seems to me that our whole grain and low fat recommendation has been an utter failure. I have a 1% success rate in getting patients healthier on this diet. Maybe, just maybe, carbs are the issue. We may want to delve into that before we have every kid in this country on a statin.
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4 comments:
If EVERY person - as the pharmers tell us - needs to be on a statin, that what actually constitutes normal?
What a neurotic nation we have become, where neither the child nor the parent can enjoy the former's childhood for constant fretting over any possible ailment.
This story highlights one of the greatest disappointments of this profession, that it has become increasingly just about anxiety-management.
If our nation REALLY were serious about working to decrease childhood and adult obesity, we would not be looking in pill bottles for the answer. The answer to our problem does not lie at the bottom of a pill bottle!
There is a better way forward! Let's:
-Require all children of both genders to take the equivalent of what we called "Home Economics" in the 1970s and 80s) so that healthful cooking and eating can be taught to young children.
-Change junior high and high school health classes to teach more than "Just say no..." (to sex and drugs), and instead, teach about why high fat diets like the Atkins diet never made any sense, and why alcohol is so likely to make one gain weight. And complement this by:
-Changing junior high and high school physical education classes to pass/fail classes that quit spending so much time on team sports, (sports which are pretty useless toward teaching students lifetime fitness), and instead teach lifetime fitness, such as teaching how to use weight lifting to preserve strength, teaching how long slow distance activities like walking and slow running are the best thing many people can do to ward off weight loss, and the like.
It is so frustrating to keep hearing that there is a lobby trying to use medicines to solve problems that are, at their core, educational and behavioral issues!
Such a very helpful guide for children. Thanks for the post.
Raquel
I would simply say to you all “awesome information”
a knockout post
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