While kicking off a campaign about childhood obesity, the First Lady recalled visiting the pediatrician and being warned that “he was concerned that something was getting off balance.”
She hadn’t noticed the changes and the doctor suggested that she take a look at her kids’ BMI. She then made some changes in their daily habits that made all the difference, according to ABC News.
Those comments – coming from a First Lady who has prioritized healthy living and the elimination of childhood obesity – drew both praise and criticism, says ABC News.
“We’ve confused health and weight in a way that’s very confusing for children and very confusing for parents,” Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an eating disorder activist and executive director of Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Disorder, told ABCNews.
“When we speak publicly about putting our children on a diet, we start to get into weight stigma and confusing the message to families.”
Barack Odama has also talked about his daughters’ weight in the past. Interviewed by Parents magazine in 2008, Obama said, “A couple of years ago – you’d never know it by looking at her now – Malia was getting a little chubby,” ABC News reported that Obama said.
He described the measures he and his wife took to retool their daughter’s diet and said the impact “was so significant that the next time we visited our pediatrician he was amazed.”
Michelle Obama has drawn not just criticism but support as well.
“The fact that she made this public, about her own … modest changes she made was exactly that – that this is a public conversation about what we’re all doing,” American Academy of Pediatrics president Dr. Judith Palfrey told ABC News. “It’s like a neighborhood conversation except that it’s national, about how we live.”
Childhood obesity impacts nearly one-third of the children in the United States, with one in three children either overweight or obese.
What do you think? Do you think that Michelle was wrong to address these issues? If she didn't address these issues, she would have been attacked for not and vice versa. So we feel it was a crap shoot either way but feel that child obesity is something that is important for parents to think about.
