A Response to the Fat Shaming Debate: an opinion shaped by service

 

Post written by CHC member Casey Strickler

Casey serves at Erie Family Health Center as a Health Educator

For the first time across the globe, more people suffer from over nutrition than from under nutrition. This leads many in our public health community to wonder how we can ensure that the next generation will have an average life span as long as their parents’.

Part of solving any issue is defining the problem. We need to stress physical activity and healthy eating because they are good for every single body—but NOT because our kids are too fat. Recently, some bioethics researchers like Daniel Callahan have been advocating for even more stigmatization against being overweight, arguing that shame and social pressure can work as primary motivators to eat healthy and lose weight. In my opinion though, increased public stigmatization only leads to internalized self-deprecation. Shaming kids and calling them an “epidemic” is going to lower self-esteem, and is not going to reverse increasing trends of hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Instead of making kids feel badly about their size, we should focus on providing all kids and their parents with healthy foods, exercise opportunities, and education on how to live healthy lives. Thin or otherwise, if kids never engage in physical activity, never have more than one serving of vegetables per day, and eat fast food three times a week, they will not be healthy.

All kids (and adults) should be active healthy eaters, whether or not they fit society’s definition of "thin." To achieve that goal, we need to incentivize healthy eating the way McDonalds has incentivized the Big Mac by making it accessible, understandable, and tasty. One program, Cooking Matters, aims to do just that. Last week, 18 teenagers showed up at Erie Humboldt Park, where I serve as a Health Educator, for our first class. As we cooked healthy pizzas, teens tested out new cooking skills and tasted new vegetables while learning how to prepare a nutritious and delicious dinner. The goal of the 6-week class is to provide teens with the education and resources to cook healthy meals so that they have the knowledge to make healthy choices throughout their lives.

As I handed out grocery bags filled with all the ingredients needed to make that day’s recipe at home, I asked one kid if he thought people would come back for the second class—“Oh yeah!” he exclaimed. “No one’s going to want to miss this!”

If we can incentivize healthy eating this way, we are on a much better path towards dealing with the real issues of obesity-related illness than we are by labeling it an epidemic of fat kids.

What do you think of fat shaming as a strategy? What other methods can we use to limit obesity-related diseases?