Strollerderby/Babble
Former New York Times food critic and professional fat guy Frank Bruni asks in a recent Times piece what role parents play in raising unfat kids. Should they closely monitor every meal and snack, or let kids make their own choices? Should parents speak up about bulging waistlines and after-workout ice cream or keep their mouths shut? Is modeling desired behaviors (translation: regular exercise, healthful meals) the key?
Yes and no and, maybe, actually, none of the above.
The thing is, researchers, experts, parents — even former fat kids — can’t agree on what’s making kids fat. Nobody knows how to prevent childhood obesity (though commenters on Bruni’s article, Kate Harding’s Broadsheet post on the topic, and commenters on my recent piece, certainly believe they do, usually amounting to, “Fat is a personal, moral failure. Do better.” Um, okay.)
Bruni’s memoir Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater describes his childhood eating habits as “compulsive and expansive” from a very young age. But why? Was he born that way? Did his parents make him that way? Could it have been prevented? Was it inevitable?
In the Times, he offers up a bit of research but mostly talks to parents, who, among other things, have the complicated job of getting their kids to be aware of what they eat without making them obsessed with it.
Bruni doesn’t come up with any hard answers, since there isn’t consensus. He does, however, find some common ground among the experts: parents can model sensible eating habits and regular exercise, provide healthy choices, serve dinner, get kids to help shop and cook. Great! Except then he goes and undermines all of that consensus with anecdotes of two kids he knows whose eating habits and parents’ lifestyles predict that they’ll act the opposite of how they actually do around food.
Granted, Bruni’s article wasn’t meant as a thesis, but he looks at obesity the way most people talk about it: as an individual problem. Finger-pointing at the individual (or the individual’s mom) is where this discussion inevitably goes. (Well, that and soda in schools).
What about the broader environment? It’s not exactly a lean world out there. Food and food service and cues to eat and opportunities to eat are, truly, everywhere. Especially for kids. I don’t just mean eeeeevil food corporations with their ubiquitous ads and manipulative product placements in all areas of life, not just on TV. I mean our society. It is all about food.
So who cares if the girl Bruni describes struggles with whether to eat French fries and the boy shovels it in to his parents’ horror. My point is, there are fries and shovel-loads of food just sitting there, waiting to be eaten. Ahhh, but it’s up to the girl and boy to resist or look away or choose an apple. Somewhere an individual has failed if a fry gets eaten.
We don’t ask for that kind of accountability with other health issues (except, maybe, lung cancer). Unlike air pollution or asthma or breast cancer, the obesity discussion starts and stops with the individual. We don’t tend to blame Katie Couric’s deceased husband for getting colon cancer, but Al Roker’s weight problem is Al Roker’s and no one else’s. Your weight problem is your fault. And until your child turns, what, 16? 18? Her weight problem is your fault, too.
Is there a chance parents are rather helpless when it comes to regulating food for their kids? Aside from slapping a granola bar out of their hands, or chastising them in front of friends, what can you do? We laugh at parents who are exasperated by the ice-cream truck at the park. We think this mother’s crusade against school cupcakes is self-serving and an imposition. I’ve insulted any number of friends by, on behalf of my kids, declining their food offerings or trying to set ground rules in advance. I’ve even left group activities that begin displaying the signs of a pre-dinner binge, which sounds just about as weird as it feels doing it.
What’s the other option? We’re told that, as parents, we’ve failed if our kids don’t make the “right” choice — that is, it’s on us if our three-year-olds want a Bomb Pop and our six-year-old’s don’t say “no thank you” to a third cupcake that week.
Bruni’s piece falls for this idea that the individual is completely in charge and, therefore, at fault for any undesirable outcomes. What should parents do? How about: what can parents do? Very little. Food. Is. Everywhere.
Of course the individual bears some responsibility for his and his child’s own health. But we humans are servants of our brains, and our brains are telling us: eat. Not only that, but really smart people are in charge of figuring out how to tell our brains to tell us to eat, and no, I’m not a conspiracy theorist writing this from my chicken coop. Advertising, people! Marketing! There are real smarty pants out there figuring ways to get us (and our kids) to buy their food, which another set of smart people have carefully designed to have the right balance of fat, salt and sugar to make you want more, more, more. Hell, one of these smart people writes essays for Babble! (Self-empowering food? Did the Gay Uncle come up Lunchables?)
I’m sure we all agree that there is no magic bullet when it comes to childhood obesity, and a lot of folks (including me) are skeptical of the one-size-fits-all growth chart percentiles and BMI scales. Smaller numbers don’t mean better health. They only mean smaller numbers. So we are talking about a lot of different things when we talk about the “nation’s weight problem.” We (collective, macro “we”) have a problem with food and overeating and overweight and lack of regular exercise in the U.S. And it’s not just a problem for those sporting a muffin top or more. It’s a problem for many of those who struck gold in the genetic lottery, too.
I haven’t read Bruni’s book, but I wonder if he concludes that only he is to blame for being a fat. I hope not. Because I think the reason is probably, excuse me, bigger than that.
Go here and tell me what you think.
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Photo: New York Times
