[NEohioPAL] THE FAT TRAP - NY Times article written by Peggy Orenstein

[Fred Sternfeld]

EAT (IT'S NOT ABOUT FOOD) continues at FPAC through May 2. 440-338-3171.

http://www.fredsternfeld.com/eat.htm

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mark warren <mwarren at eatingdisorderscleveland.org>
Date: Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 9:24 PM
Subject: Fwd: [aed-members] NYT Article FYI - Might be Very Useful for
Patients and Mothers
To: Fred Sternfeld <fsternfeld at gmail.com>, "JGACTOR at aol.com" <
jgactor at aol.com>





nytimes today

 April 12, 2010
The Fat Trap *By PEGGY ORENSTEIN*

*Food is never* just food. Food is love. Food is solace. It is politics. It
is religion. And if that’s not enough to heap on your dinner plate each
night, food is also, especially for mothers, the instant-read measure of our
parenting. We are not only what *we* eat, we are what we feed our children.
So here in Berkeley — where a preoccupation with locally grown, organic,
sustainable agriculture is presumed — the mom who strolls the farmers’
markets can feel superior to the one who buys pesticide-free produce trucked
in from Mexico, who can, in turn, lord it over the one who stoops to
conventionally grown carrots (though the folks who grow their own trump us
all). Let it slip that you took the kids to McDonald’s, and watch how fast
those play dates dry up.

Doing right by our kids means doing right by their health — body and soul.
Yet even as awareness about the family
diet<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/food-guide-pyramid/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>has
spread across the country (especially among the middle class and the
affluent), so, it seems, have youngsters’ waistlines. According to the Centers
for Disease Control and
Prevention<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/centers_for_disease_control_and_prevention/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
a full third of America’s children are overweight, and 17 percent are
clinically obese — a rate that has more than tripled since 1976. Those
figures may be alarming, yet equally disturbing are the numbers of children,
girls in particular, who risk their health in the other direction, in the
vain pursuit of thinness. In a 2002 survey of 81,247 Minnesota high-school
students published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, more than half of
the girls reported engaging in some form of disordered behavior while trying
to lose weight: fasting, popping diet pills, smoking,
vomiting<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/nausea-and-vomiting/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
abusing laxatives, binge
eating<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/binge-eating/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.


Parents, then, are left in quandary, worrying about both the perils of
obesity <http://www.nytimes.com/info/obesity?inline=nyt-classifier> and
those of anorexia<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/anorexia-nervosa/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
How can you simultaneously encourage your daughter to watch her size and
accept her body? My own initial impulse, when I found out I was pregnant
with a girl, was to suggest that my husband take responsibility for feeding
her. After all, he doesn’t see a few extra pounds as a character flaw. Nor
does he serve up a heaping helping of internal conflict with every meal.
It’s not that I’m extreme; it’s just that like most — heck *all* — of the
women I know, my relationship to food, to my weight, to my body is . . .
complicated. I did not want to pass that pathology on to my daughter.

At best, weight is delicate territory between mothers and their girls. Michelle
Obama<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/michelle_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>found
that out firsthand when kicking off her campaign to eliminate
childhood obesity. In an attempt to destigmatize the condition, especially
for African-Americans, she confessed that the family pediatrician warned her
that “something was getting off-balance”; she needed to watch her daughters’
body-mass indices. So she cut back on portion sizes, switched to low-fat
milk, left fruit out on the table, banned weekday TV viewing.

The news that the First Mom put her daughters on a “diet” set the
blogosphere abuzz. She was accused, even by supporters, of subjecting her
daughters’ bodies to public scrutiny, making their appearance fair game.
Some grimly predicted that years of purging awaited the girls. The actual
message Mrs. Obama was trying to get across — that minor changes can make a
major difference in kids’ lives — was, at least temporarily, lost in the
uproar.

The president also has overshared about his children’s weights, saying in a
2008 interview, “A couple of years ago — you’d never know it by looking at
her now — Malia was getting a little chubby.” He, too, was criticized,
though less harshly, maybe because while fathers’ comments sting, nothing
cuts deeper than a mother’s appraising gaze. Daughters understand that
early: according to a study of preschool girls published in the journal
Pediatrics in 2001, those whose mothers expressed “higher concern” over
their daughters’ weights not only reported more negative body images than
their peers but also perceived themselves as less smart and less physically
capable (paternal “concern” was associated only with the latter). The effect
was independent of the child’s actual size.

A 2003 analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,
meanwhile, showed that mothers were three times as likely to notice excess
weight in daughters than in sons, even though the boys were more likely to
be large. That gave me pause. It is so easy for the concern with “health,”
however legitimate, to justify a focus on girls’ appearances. For
organic-eating, right-living parents whose girls are merely on the fleshy
side of average, “health” may also mask a discomfort with how a
less-than-perfect daughter reflects on them. “ ‘Good’ parents today are
expected to have normal-weight kids,” says Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of
the book “The Body Project” and a professor of history and human development
at Cornell University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/cornell_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
“Having a fat girl is a failure.”

By the time my own daughter was born, I realized that avoiding conversations
about food, health and body image would be impossible: what I didn’t say
would speak as loudly as anything I did. So rather than opt out, I decided
to actively model something different, something saner. I’ve tried to forget
all I once knew about
calories<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/diet-calories/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
carbs, fat and protein; I haven’t stepped on a scale in seven years. At
dinner I pointedly enjoy what I eat, whether it’s steamed broccoli or pecan
pie. I don’t fetishize food or indulge in foodieism. I exercise because it
feels good, and I never, ever talk about weight. Honestly? It feels entirely
unnatural, this studied unconcern, and it forces me to be more vigilant than
ever about what goes in and what comes out of my mouth. Maybe my daughter
senses that, but this conscious antidiet is the best I can do.

Still, my daughter lives in the world. She watches Disney movies. She plays
with Barbies. So although I was saddened, I was hardly surprised one day
when, at 6 years old, she looked at me, frowned and said, “Mama, don’t get
f-a-t, O.K.?”

At least, I thought, she didn’t hear it from me.



*Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of “Waiting for
Daisy,” a memoir.*

-- 
Mark Warren, MD, MPH, FAED
Cleveland Center for Eating Disorders
DBTCleveland
216-765-0500
216-765-0521 (fax)
www.EatingDisordersCleveland.org

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