PC doctors now telling parents to lie to children about their obesity

Friday, August 26, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: obesity, children, political correctness

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(NaturalNews) One of the most important things, if not the most important, that children should share with their parents is trust. A child who has little worldly experience and lacks the brain development and maturity to make important decisions and guide his or her actions must rely on parents to guide them, mentor them and help them understand all of life's peculiarities.

But some politically correct physicians are now asking parents to lie to their kids if they don't believe they can accept or understand the truth – a blatant violation of the trust and faith that are vital to the child's parental bond.

As reported by New York Magazine, one of the things that PC docs are "advising" against is parents talking to their teenagers about their weight – and in particular, about their teens' need to adjust their diets in order to maintain a healthier weight. Ignoring the problems of obesity and eating disorders, they claim, is a better way to reduce the incidence of both.

In other words, the better thing to do, these "experts" say, is to allow your children to maintain an unhealthy weight and lifestyle rather than possibly hurt their feelings by giving them some dieting and weight-loss advice that could actually save their lives.

According to newly issued guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, parents should essentially lie to all teens, whether they have weight problems or not.

Diet and exercise has long been the go-to weight loss combo – until now

"Scientific evidence summarized in the new recommendations shows that physicians and parents can ward off problems at both ends of the weight spectrum by avoiding focusing teens' attention on weight or dieting, and instead encouraging a healthy, balanced lifestyle," says a press release from Stanford University Medical Center, in highlighting the AAP guidelines.

Dr. Neville Golden, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at the university's medical center, and lead author of the guidelines, said that he and his research team developed them partly out of a growing concern that some teens may be using poor, unhealthy methods to lose weight. Some of these include forced vomiting, taking laxatives and ingesting diet pills. He says that since these teens have odd eating patterns but don't fit the "image" of patients with eating disorders, their problems could easily be overlooked by their doctors.

But isn't obesity a big deal anymore, especially in America where it is considered an epidemic? Yes, says the AAP, but rates are coming down in children and holding steady in adolescents. So now, we suppose, it's okay to start lying to our kids and telling them things really aren't that bad.

The recommendations, which have recently been published in the journal Pediatrics, are said to be the result of five evidence-based strategies, three of which consist of things to avoid, while two are behaviors that ought to be promoted.

Neither parents nor doctors should be encouraging teens to diet, AAP says, and parents should not talk about weight at all – neither their own nor their child's. They should also never tease their teen about how much they weigh.

No "fat-shaming," which is an entirely PC concept, or counting calories. Both, the AAP says, are equally bad.

'Shaming' used to be called 'caring'

What does the organization recommend? Parents eating meals together regularly with their children, and encouraging a balanced diet and exercise – but only for fitness, not as an activity to help their teens lose weight, even though diet and exercise have been the go-to weight loss combination for eons (because they work).

But Golden, for all his recommendations, still doesn't really have the answers. He even admits that the evidence is unclear as to why family meals help with weight problems. He says it could be that kids see parents eating healthy food and setting a good example – which makes sense – but that assumes they are healthy to begin with.

It seems as though these "guidelines" are little more than politically correct psycho-babble meant to disguise and hide a problem – teen obesity – rather than tackling it head-on. Doctors like Golden want parents, through their silence, to become enablers of childhood obesity, thus perhaps saddling their kids with a lifetime of health problems.

All because saying something about a child's weight and advising them how to fix the problem is "shaming."

But it's not, really; it's called "caring." And if we lived in a country where everyone didn't get a trophy just for showing up and playing the game, we would still understand that.

Sources:

NYMag.com

EurekaAlert.org

Science.NaturalNews.com