Mommas, don’t your babies grow up to be fatties.

Sometimes I think the pharmaceutical and diet industry sit around a table ala Austin Powers and do evil laughs every time the medical community posts research that say we should worry if our babies are fat.  The diet industry needs new customers and the pharmaceutical industry needs more money for diet drugs that don't work.

According  to the Institute of Medicine, having a fat baby is no longer a good thing, it's a bad thing. It's will cause your child to be scum of the earth. No they won't become a politican, they will be fat. Oh, when they say baby what they really mean is toddler. And when they say beware of the fat baby they really mean mom is bad. Mom feeds baby too much, mom doesn’t stay home and cook because dad can’t ever cook. For he is a manchild in his man cave. (Stereotyping men as being useless  is another rant.)

 I am disturbed by encouraging toddlers to diet. I’m sure if a rep from IOM saw this, I would get the standard responses. It's a lifestyle change. They aren't dieting, they are eating less! Do you want all these babies will die (How about instead of wasting money on making fat babies thin, we work to decrease infant mortality). However I have to wonder what will happen with the parents of a child who doesn’t become slim after food monitoring; mandatory exercise, lectures from the doctors (I’m sure every child will love to have “The Talk.”) Will less food become next? Oh wait it is already here. IOM is encoraging portion control. 

Now take a look at what their panel is recommending

Pediatricians should track weight gain at every routine visit

 Cut down the time children spend watching TV or using the computer or cell phone

Encourage children in preschool and child care to get more physical activity

Make sure children get enough shut eye

Encourage mothers to stick with breastfeeding for at least six months

Make sure kids are getting the right food portions for their age

Chop off the first and last one (or change the last one to enough servings of fruits and veggies) and what do you get? You get good recommendations for everyone even adults (with the exception of breast feeding) that don’t include stigma and encourage healthy eating no matter what size the child is. 

Children are remarkable if you don’t fuck with their hunger cues. It’s okay for parents to make sure children get the right food (i.e. no you can't have more ice cream but you can have an apple) but arbitrarily deciding how much is too much may end up with it being too little. And with our fat = evil culture, I’m sure parents will end up limiting food intake. Portion control will encourage dieting at an even younger age. (See my post last week about children as young as 10 vomiting for weight loss.) 

And guess what? Some children are fat and stay fat, some children are fat and grow out of it. Some children are thin and remain thin, some children are slender and get bigger and some kids are thin and become fat. (I’m the last one not a fat baby or toddler.) Like adults accept that even children comes in all shapes and sizes. 

Comments

[Lisa]

As the mother of a toddler, I am curious where they find these lazy, gluttonous toddlers. Seriously, I am lucky if my two year old son will eat one meal a day. He does like snack food, so I try to keep things organic and give him fruit or carrots with humus instead of chips. However, I did just for fun keep track of what he was eating over a week. I did not control his eating except to make sure he did not over indulge in sugary treats. It ended up to be about 1000 calories a day. It is almost as if he has some sort of internal monitor. Also if someone has a toddler or preschooler that sits still for more than ten minutes, please tell me how I can make that happen. I think this is just another way to make us frightened as parents and to make us conform whether we like it or not.