TAKE FAT: Fat children to be taken into foster care!!

This is a brief article that I found from the mail online and quite honestly this really astonished me, have a read and see what you think, my views are at the end.


Taken from MailOnline:
Overweight children should be taken into foster care until they lose weight, a leading obesity expert claims.
Dr David Ludwig also suggested that their parents should undergo ‘instruction’ to stop them buying junk food.
Separation would last for  as short a time as possible  to ‘support not just the  child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible’, he argued.

Fighting fat: Stormy Bradley, left, and her daughter Maya, 14. Maya is 5ft 4in and weighs 200lbs

‘That may require instruction on parenting,’ he added.
Dr Ludwig explained that he was inspired to speak out after a three-year-old girl weighing 6st 6lb came to his obesity clinic.

Her parents had physical disabilities and little money, and found it difficult to control her weight.

State intervention: Dr David Ludwig, an obesity expert, believes certain fat children should be taken into foster care for their own good

Last year, at age 12, she weighed 24st 4lb and had developed diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure and sleep apnoea.
Dr Ludwig, of the Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital in Boston, in the United States, said: ‘Out of medical concern, the state placed this girl in foster care, where she simply received three balanced meals a day and a snack or two, and moderate physical activity.’
She has since lost 9st 4lb, and although she is still obese, her diabetes and apnoea have disappeared.
She remains in foster care.
In a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr Ludwig suggested  only extreme cases of obesity should result  in removal – but this would still affect two million American children.
He added that removing children from the family home  was better than putting them through weight-loss surgery.
His comments have sparked a fierce row, with some  commentators accusing him of pushing the nanny state too far.
Arthur Caplan, professor  of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said: ‘Our laws give enormous authority to parents, and rightly so.

 

Walkies: Maya and Stormy walk their dog Bubbles in Atlanta. Stormy says she sympathises with families facing legal action over their children's weight.

The only basis for compelling medical treatment against a parent’s wishes are if a child is at imminent risk of death – meaning days or hours – and a proven cure exists for what threatens to kill them.
‘Obesity does not pass these requirements.’
Last year, paediatrician Dr Russell Viner and colleagues wrote in the British Medical Journal that obesity was a factor in several child protection cases in the UK.
They argued that rejecting efforts to control an extremely obese child’s weight was equal to ‘neglect’.
Last December, a report from the NHS revealed that one in ten children in England is obese when they start primary school, rising to one in five once they leave.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014070/Take-fat.html#ixzz1S9ZjcxvP


My Thoughts:

Firstly it would be right to say that to allow your child to enter into such a dangerous state of obesity and to allow them to demorolise themselves so outwardly is not just wrong, it could be looked at as both neglect and child abuse. But with this said, it should also be considered that these parents are perhaps being denied proper nutritional advise, lacking the knowledge of cookery skills and possibly have over eating habits themselves which are not addressed. Obesity is as much (if not more) of a problem as other eating disorders such as anorexia or buliema and should be looked at in such a way. It is much deeper than just greed, its an inbuilt habit, a learnt trait and in some cases a psychological restraint.

In my humble opinion it would be very wrong to take a child from its parents because of the way they look, after all and depending on the childs age, it may not be the childs fault as to its diet, availble food and of course parental boundaries with regards to eating. To live in fear as a parent and child alike, that if he/she were to eat a bowl of chips or a few biscuits then they may be at a bigger risk of being taken into care is morally an incorrect judgement. The child may have underlying psychological problems which they may need to address and will more than likely need the help and support from home life, not being thrown into a totally new family where they may feel even more need to comfort or habitually eat for safety. I am of course generalising and assuming somewhat, but lets look at establishments out of the parents control, schools being the most obvious. School dinners, as has come to attention time and again, are less than adequate where diet and nutrition are concerned. Most serving up chips, pizza and sausages washed down with some sort of high sugared and coloured flavoured milk. Alot of work has been done lately to try and sort this dierty crisis but there is still along way to go, after all simply offering a piece of limp cabbage next to chips is hardly a solution. Parents rely on schools to provide their children with a good standard of something which is so basic in terms of our exsistance and we are not being supported with sufficiently.

So back to the topic in question, why should children be taken from their families when it could be thought that the problem doesnt solely lie with the parents? Taking a child away from their family for being overweight is simply an unnessary punshiment to all involved and would solve nothing but heartache. I believe as a nutritionist that we need to give parents and children the opportunity to learn valuable life skills such as cooking and preparing healthy foods and to inform them adequately to make the right choices when it comes to eating a healthy and balanced diet. Balanced being the opperative word, children need to learn from a young age that an occassional treat is fine too but to enjoy and indulge their taste buds with foods that will be beneficial first. I think that if this is done from day dot, the problem could be significantly reduced and such shocking concequences banished. Education, long term dedication and participation is what is most definately needed.

I would love to know your thoughts so please leave me your comments!!