More food blogging:

The Washington Post reported that children are becoming more and more obese, which is leading to an unprecedented rise in health problems.  It makes this blogger sad for the kids, whose bodies are being damaged before they are even old enough to do something about it:

Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians’ offices; even a spike in child gallstones, also once a singularly adult affliction. Minority youth are most severely affected, because so many are pushing the scales into the most dangerous territory.

Joint conditions and high blood pressure in elementary school?  Where are the parents, you ask?

Physical therapist Brian H. Wrotniak, who works with overweight youth at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, hears resignation more than anger in his patients’ voices. “They complain of simple things like tying their shoes. They can’t bend down and tie their shoes because excess fat gets in the way,” he said.

Awww… their parents are resigned to this fate.  Who, besides the parents, is feeding these kids every day?  If your kid even starts to get too fat to tie her sneakers, then you, as a parent, need to change what you are doing.  Feed your kid oatmeal or Kashi in the morning, with a banana or an apple.  Pack her lunches every day - and if you don’t have the time to do it in the morning, do it the evening before.  Enlist her help to make the aforementioned lunches; she’s more likely to eat that which she chose to eat.  Don’t allow her to spend her money on junk food - in fact, don’t allow her to bring snack money to school.  Stop purchasing soda and junk food, so she won’t have soda or junk food in the house when she gets home from school.  It is physically impossible to eat that which is not there.  Cook healthy dinners.  Sign her up for soccer or lacrosse or swimming.  Be a parent, which generally involves allowing children to make mistakes that they can learn from, and not allowing them to make mistakes that only harm them.

What baffles me is why these doctors do not tell the parents that, unless their children get down to a healthy weight, that they will be reported for  neglect.  Not a fan of government intervention, but there is simply no reason to allow parents to do this much damage to their children’s well-being.

A final hypothesis: healthy food isn’t cheap.  Fruits and vegetables are more expensive than crackers and cookies.  Ditto for fruit juice and milk, compared to soda.  Healthy food also takes longer to prepare than junk food.  Could it possibly be that stable, two-parent households (with either double the income or double the time, or both) are better designed to provide for the well-being of their children?  that this is but one more consequence of the ethic which elevates parents above their children’?  In a post-Roe world, aren’t we supposed to only see loving, caring, dedicated parents - and ignore the fact that the rates of childhood obesity, child abuse, and other social ills has only increased since the 1970s?  Just a thought.