WE HAVE WAYS TO ASSIMILATE STUPID PARENTS!

Some Washington and Minnesotan white coat healthists, have surveyed 46 parents of allegedly overweight children and declared that parents underestimate the weight of their offspring and are insensitive to the possible future consequences this excess weight might bring.

Unacceptable cry the healthists! Parents must be taught (read brainwashed) how to recognize pre symptoms of eventual diseases due to the overweight of their children. The naked eye and the parental protective instinct don’t count in the war against obesity. Never mind that the child does not look overweight, never mind that the child is healthy, never mind that permissible BMI levels have been brought down to new lows, never mind that many of these children will grow out of their pre-puberty excess fat, only 13% of the parents surveyed recognizing that their child is overweight is totally unacceptable. So unacceptable, that it is indisputably worthy of a plethora of articles in the media worldwide. This is a serious public health problem! These indignant parents must be assimilated, they must learn! And we have ways to make them learn: More fear mongering, more junk studies, more collaboration with the media, more government grants, more pharma grants, more repression, more…taxpayers money and direly needed human resources wasted on useless studies, polls and surveys!

In the real world, children of the third world starve, bulimia and anorexia are ravaging an ever increasing number of our youth, children throughout the world are physically and mentally abused and exploited, but our white coat ‘’lords’’ are struggling to gain control over our parental authority on the basis of a few pounds of weight over what they define as ideal.

You can read the article at Science Direct: Parents Foster Significant Misperceptions Of Children's Weight

OBESITY EPIDEMIC CHALLENGED BY EXPERTS

When reading an article such as the one from Pennlive.com we tend to think that perhaps there is hope that the anti-obesity campaign will not corrupt public opinion to the level the anti-tobacco fear mongering campaign did.

The article exposes exactly the same points we have been bringing up for the last three years on the obesity issue. There is a very important factor that the article doesn’t highlight however, but that must be emphasized at every opportunity because it has changed the ‘’technical’’ perception of obesity, overnight: ‘’ In 1998, the U.S. National Institutes of Health brought U.S. definitions into line with World Health Organization guidelines, lowering the normal/overweight cut-off from BMI 27.8 to BMI 25. This had the effect of redefining approximately 30 million Americans, previously "technically healthy" to "technically overweight". (source Wikipedia). As for Health Canada, they made their ‘’adjustment’’ in 2003. In Quebec alone, that ‘’adjustment’’ created an additional 1 million obese people from one day to the next.

Excerpts from the long but most interesting read: Some experts doubt obesity epidemic

LONDON (AP) — Go on, have another doughnut. According to some experts whose views are public health heresy, the jury is still out on how dangerous it is to be fat.
"The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated," said Dr. Vincent Marks, emeritus professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey.
…….

But obesity contrarians say that there's no data proving why being fat — in itself — would be dangerous. "There's no good causal connection," said Eric Oliver, author of Fat Politics and a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

Blaming obesity for diabetes and heart attacks, Oliver says, is like blaming lung cancer on bad breath rather than on smoking. Excess weight may actually be a red herring, Oliver says, since other factors like exercise, diet or genetic predispositions towards diseases are harder to measure than weight.

In addition to questioning the dangers of being fat, researchers like Marks also criticize oft-repeated alarmist projections about the rise in obesity — like the British government's warning that nearly half of Britain will be obese by 2050.

Those simply aren't based on good evidence, they say.
……..

In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finding that overweight people typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen other studies have come to the same conclusion.

Outrage ensued. Prominent health experts called the research flawed and worried that people would gleefully supersize their meals.
………

Some obesity skeptics question the motives of experts who make dire predictions about obesity.
With millions of dollars for obesity researchers, an industry of anti-fat drugs, and a boom in the number of doctors offering surgeries like stomach-stapling, the more fat people there are, the more profits there will be in selling them solutions.

Experts on both sides of the obesity debate have often criticized WHO's overweight and obesity measures, saying they are too low.

When WHO defined the body mass index scores constituting normal, overweight and obese, they appeared to be the result of an independent expert committee convened by WHO.

Yet the 1997 Geneva consultation was held jointly with the International Obesity Task Force, an advocacy group whose self-described mission is "to inform the world about the urgency of the (obesity) problem."

According to the task force's most recent available annual report, more than 70 percent of their funding came from Abbott Laboratories and F. Hoffman La-Roche, companies which make top-selling anti-fat pills.

The task force remains one of Europe's most influential obesity advocacy groups and continues to work closely with WHO.

The blurred lines between pharmaceutical money and obesity groups have also caused concern in Britain. In 2006, one of the country's top obesity doctors quit the organization he founded to combat obesity, the National Obesity Forum, complaining that its goals had been skewed by drug money.

"There's not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a huge amount in making sure it stays a big problem," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health care policy at Johns Hopkins University.

Still, while skeptics insist that obesity warnings must be taken with a grain of salt, nearly all agree that while a little bit of extra padding may not be too deadly, too much almost certainly is.

"The vast majority of people who get labeled under the obesity epidemic are well under 300 pounds and probably are not facing big health consequences," Oliver said. "It's the morbidly obese people who should be worried."

DAIRY PRODUCTS WILL CARRY SHOCKING WARNINGS

More nanny tactics from the UK. Dairy foods will now carry shocking warnings similar to tobacco warnings. And to think that some didn’t believe that the smoking campaign would set a precedent! How far will this go and how long before public opinion becomes so far corrupted that we would find demonizing the obese perfectly normal? How long before instead of a smoker, this sign

portrays an obese person getting punched? It all depends on how active citizens become in the battle against health nannies and interest group agendas. We have now moved from the anti-tobacco campaign, to the ‘’unhealthy’’ eating habits campaign at a record speed. There are concrete actions happening on banning all ads aimed at children, on getting rid of the happy meal, on taxing junk food, on parents losing custody of their obese children, on making restaurants inaccessible to the obese, on mandatory monitoring of children’s mass index , on refusing to operate on the obese.

And who once again stands out in this anti-obesity hype? None other than the pharmaceutical industry directly, or through their charitable front groups. Let’s take a look at a few sources highlighting the involvement of Big Pharma in this issue.

From Sandy Swarcz’ blog: Sponsors of the obesity crisis , Cradle-to-grave customers

Who funds the Canadian Obesity Network? Following are their industry funders as listed on their website:
Abbott Laboratories Ltd.
Boehringer Ingelheim Ltd.
Glycemic Index Laboratories Inc.
Innovus Research Inc.
Isotechnika Diagnostics
Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Division
JSS Medical Research
Eli Lilly

Medtronics Inc.
Merck Frosst Canada Ltd.
New Era Nutrition

Novartis
Nutrition

Novartis Pharmaceuticals
Pfizer

Sanofi-Aventis

TM Bioscience
University Technologies International
Wyeth

For $ 3598.00 for a single user license you can buy a book titled: Anti-Obesity Treatments 2007 to 2012 A blockbuster target market , written as a guide to the pharmaceutical industry and the golden opportunity that the obesity alleged ‘’epidemic’’ presents to them. Take a look at the contents here.

It leaves no doubt that anti-obesity is big business and the stakeholders will do anything and everything in their power to make obesity as unacceptable as smoking in order to force people to use their drugs, unless of course they’re stopped before they go too far. How can they be stopped? Politicians should be made to feel the heat from concerned citizens, by writing or phoning them regularly. Obese people should not bow their head in shame but stand proud of their bodies and warn the government that their body is personal property and government should keep out of their lives. That universal healthcare means that everyone should be covered and segregation of illnesses deserving of treatment, will not be tolerated. That children are under their parents’ authority and unless there is undisputable proof that parents are hurting their offspring, government has to get out of the family dynamics and stay out. Citizens who want to lose weight should find natural methods and not give in to the miracle pill solution who have been proven useless unless real will power is accompanying them.


Citizens should learn from the anti-smoking campaign and fight this anti-obesity offensive with all their energy. It will not go away unless we all get involved to make it go away.

Dairy products to carry cigarette-style health warnings as Government uses 'shock tactics'


Popular dairy foods like cheese and butter could soon have to carry cigarette-style warnings in a bid to slash Britain's soaring levels of obesity and heart disease, according to reports.

The hard-hitting government health warnings would be aimed at urging people to cut down on the amount of saturated fat they eat and make their favourite dairy products an occasional treat rather than regular part of their everyday diet.

According to trade magazine The Grocer, the government's Food Standards Agency is considering using shock tactics to persuade Britons to cut down on their consumption of saturated fats.

But the controversial crackdown is set to spark a furious outcry from the dairy industry as it could target a range of regular snack staples such as cheese sandwiches and buttered toast which watchdogs warn are high in saturated fats.

The Grocer says that the food watchdog is also considering asking manufacturers of products high in saturated fat, such as cheese and butter, to put cigarette-style warnings on packs which would urge consumers to eat such products in moderation or as a rare treat.

The move would form part of a publicity campaign developed under the FSA's strategy to cut consumption of fat, says The Grocer.

A consumer study conducted for the agency by CMI Research found that an approach based on shock tactics was considered "successful in challenging complacent attitudes and preconceptions of saturated fat".

It added: "'Shock tactics' show potential to cut through the crowded media environment, are likely to be memorable and could potentially have talk value."

The researchers said that graphic images of fat - the kind shown on popular TV shows about food and health - had a big impact on the consumers they spoke to.

"Dramatising the amount of saturated fat in foods in an unexpected and unappetising way proved effective, as almost all were repulsed by the idea of eating lard " said the researchers.
"Furthermore, it created a strong emotional response via the shocking visual images and so acted as a wake-up call to many."

The FSA which presented the findings to industry stakeholders last week, insisted any plans for a campaign were at "an early stage".

"Any activity in this area is not due until 2009, " an agency spokesman told The Grocer.
"As part of its planning process the FSA is likely to undertake further research and discussions with a wide pool of stakeholders to explore how best to proceed.

"At this stage it is too early to speculate about the form such activity may take."

However, The Grocer says that it is understood the agency is about to test messages designed to reveal that everyday foods - primarily meat, dairy, snacks and confectionery - are much higher in saturated fats than people may realise.

These include the claim that two slices of buttered toast contain more saturated fat than four doughnuts, and that one cheese sandwich contains more than half an individual's guideline daily amounts of saturated fat.

The FSA is also to consider messages that illustrate the damaging effect saturated fat can have on the body.

But reports that the FSA is contemplating such a high-profile approach has caused consternation among supplies of dairy products likely to be targeted amid fears that their sales would be hit.
Ed Komorowski technical director of Dairy UK said there was a danger that simple messages could switch people away from balanced diets that included healthy food such as cheese, which is high in calcium.

He told The Grocer: "Tactics designed to shock people could actually mislead them. Comparing the saturated fat content of hot buttered toast with doughnuts is not giving the full picture of the nutritional qualities of these products."

He also warned that such an advertising campaign could fall foul of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Clare Cheney director general of the Provision Trade Federation told The Grocer: "Diet is a complex thing. It's not like cigarettes, where you either smoke or you don't and if you do it's bad for you.

"With diet, it's about eating a combination of different things in different quantities."

MANDATORY MONITORING OF CHILDREN'S BODY MASS INDEX

On October 17, 2007 we commented on a Denver Public School District policy that weighed children and issued health report cards to their parents. We were appalled by this practice then, we are even more appalled now that it has become a state legislation in the state of Georgia.

Excess weight or even obesity does not automatically equate to bad health or sickness. Many children are plump or fat in their childhood but lose this excess weight in adolescence or adulthood without any further complications or illnesses. The duty of all adults, whether school authorities, neighbors, relatives or friends, is to report to the child welfare authorities any sign of neglect or abuse suspected in a child. When there are no noticeable health problems or signs of neglect, routinely passing judgment on the child’s weight is totally unwarranted, especially when it cannot be predicted what damage this evaluation can cause to the child’s mental and psychological state of mind at the vulnerable age when self esteem and acceptance by their peers is of utmost importance.

Senate mandates weighing Georgia kids twice a year
New law would requires schools to track weight and BMI

Georgia's elementary school children will be weighed and measured twice a year by school officials under a bill that passed the Senate Friday.

The legislation requires schools to track kids' body mass index, a combination of height and weight used to determine whether the child is healthy. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Carter (R-Tifton) requires that schools post the aggregate BMI information on their Web sites and follow state regulations on offering physical education classes.

Carter said the bill would work much like test scores, with schools reporting their data so parents could check out how they measure up to other area schools. Children would be weighed in a confidential office setting and their personal data would not become public, he said.

"Sally, step into the office, step up on the scale, that's about as invasive as it gets," he said. More than one in three kids in Georgia is overweight, he said. "The presence of childhood obesity is staggering."

Arkansas was the first state to implement such a rule, in 2003. The bill, which mirrors legislation in several other states, passed 37 to 13 after a heated debate.

Sen. Preston Smith (R-Rome) said "the long arm of the government" should stop reaching into peoples' private lives.

He said worries that schools' will pressure children to lose weight and stigmatize them, mimicking what he worried school officials would say: "Come on, pick it up fat kid, we're not going to get money if you don't!""

As he left the podium, refusing to engage in a debate, Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford) who supports the bill, shouted "chicken!" at him.

It's not the first time lawmakers have tried to take up childhood obesity. Carter introduced a bill in 2006 that would have required more PE for Georgia elementary and middle schoolers, but the measure failed.

OBESITY VS. GASTRIC SURGERY RISKS

The marketing ploy used in the ADJUSTABLE GASTRIC BANDING SURGERY study that we commented on January 24th, motivated us to do more research into bariatric surgeries, the outcomes and the risks. We didn’t have to look any further than Sandy Szwarc’s extensively documented blog -- Junkfood Science -- to find a series of articles on the issue.

The first of the articles that caught our attention can be read here. Healthcare or healthscare, as some rightly call it, is very big business with many players involved. The marketing strategies include, but are not limited to, appealing to the emotions of uninformed people who are unsuspicious of doctors, government agencies, scientists and NGO’s and who naively believe that all these players work towards one common goal – the well-being of citizens. While people have been conditioned to be distrustful of corporate interests and with good reason, they trust without questioning those who allegedly work in the best interests of the citizens. It is imperative citizens educate themselves in order to be in a position to take informed decisions for their own health and well-being.

THE FAT PHOBIA

We have been trying to bring this phenomenon to the attention of the media and the health authorities, for some time. Naturally, because we don’t hold any fancy medical degrees, our worries were simply ignored.

Any campaign that goes overboard, no matter how noble the end, is bound to bring perverse side effects that can often be worse than the problem it tries to solve. Public health has to go back to the days when they were looking after infectious diseases. Lifestyle choices are not something that public health should meddle with. There are competent and qualified medical authorities that can deal with the problems on a one to one basis with patients and those who seek their advice, according to the individuals’ specific needs and ways to effectively help them.

There isn’t a ‘’one fit all’’ miracle solution. We and our children, are not automatons that can be programmed to act and react uniformly to public health’s theoretical solutions.

Obesity worries show signs of backfiring

Weight becoming an unhealthy obsession for some kids, parents

Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service
Fears about obesity are feeding "fat phobia," experts warn.

They're worried more healthy kids are obsessing about weight -- and more parents are projecting irrational fears about fat on their children.

Some question whether the obesity "epidemic" is even real, and whether schools have any business trying to fight obesity.

"It seems like whenever we decide there is an epidemic people run around helter skelter trying to solve the problem without really thinking about it in an organized fashion," says Dr. Leora Pinhas, a child psychiatrist and psychiatric director of the eating disorders program at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

"I'm not convinced that telling kids that they're fat, or that they might get fat, is a way of solving the problem."

The hospital has seen preteens and teens who attended obesity-prevention programs at school.
They then "decide they're going to be the best kid at not getting fat, (and) then end up losing so much weight that they put themselves medically at risk," Pinhas says.

"They're little kids. They don't have to lose a lot of weight to get sick.

"We have had kids who have been weighed in the gym and then had to deal with how they felt about their weight, and these may have been kids who never weighed themselves before and it hadn't been a concern before," Pinhas says.

Children are being taught in nutrition classes how to cut all fat from their diet.

But, "who buys food, who makes the meals? It's not the eight-year-old," Pinhas says.
"All we seem to do is keep placing more unreasonable expectations on children that can be confusing for them."

Children are hearing that fat is bad. Period. And where anorexia and bulimia before adolescence was once unheard of, hospitals are now seeing eating disorders in children as young as seven.
Children are social sponges, Pinhas says.

" How many times does a kid have to overhear a conversation like, 'Wow, you look great, you lost weight,' or 'Look at my butt, it's really fat, I should cut down on what I'm eating,' or 'All that fat is going to give you a heart attack?'"

Susan Willard says a lot of the pressure to be thin now comes from home.

"It's not infrequent that we see patients who have families who are over-invested in body shape and weight," says Willard, clinical director of the eating disorders treatment centre at River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans, where many patients come from Canada.

In these families, calorie counting, fat-gram counting and exercise "become a primary focus in the home and at the table.

"Kids who grow up in families of that sort believe that it is of very primary importance that they 'eat right' and stay fit and healthy, and that ultimately can turn out to be extremely unhealthy," says Willard, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Tulane University School of Medicine and co-author of the book, When Dieting Becomes Dangerous.

But parents also live in a culture that says what matters most is to be thin. "They're being told over and over again that if their kid is fat, it's like a death sentence. They're being told they're not good parents," Pinhas says.

"I think we should stop worrying about whether someone is fat or not because it's not necessarily an indicator of poor lifestyle or imminent mortality or morbidity."

Dr. Ahmed Boachie says many teens whose weight is healthy believe wrongly that they're overweight. Even campaigns to rid schools of snacks can lead to negative messages and neurosis about food.

"And when they feel that way they're more likely to be dieting," says Boachie, clinical director of the eating disorders program at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ont.
But a study of nearly 15,000 girls and boys aged nine to 14 showed that dieting not only doesn't work, it actually leads to weight gain. Kids severely restrict their diet, then lose control and binge or overeat, and the cycle continues.

What's more, dieting is considered a risk factor for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa -- "very chronic and difficult illnesses with often fatal outcomes," Boachie says. Most people who develop eating disorders were never overweight or obese to begin with, he says.

"Eating disorders are illnesses. If any parent has any weight concerns, instead of listening to the street definition of obesity, contact the experts," Boachie says.
A recent study found that girls who eat at least five meals a week with their family are less likely to be preoccupied with dieting.

Signs that a child or teen might be engaged in extreme dieting or have an eating disorder include coming home from school and saying they have already eaten, separating themselves from family at meal times, and complaining of being cold and tired all the time.

Younger children often don't stop eating completely, but they eat less, complain their stomach hurts or say they're not hungry.

"Don't forget, they're small to start with. Losing a few kilos is enough to lose a significant proportion of their body weight," Pinhas says.

"What we end up seeing, sometimes, are kids who just stop growing."

IT IS TIME EPIDEMIOLOGY TAKES A FEW STEPS BACK

The ink of the latest report from the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research urging us that in order to stay healthy we should maintain a body mass index as close to 18 as possible isn’t even dry yet, that a new study is now telling us that actually cancers are not associated with being somewhat overweight and higher weights are associated with better survivals when we get sick. How can we possibly trust any of the advice these so called scientists give us about our personal health? How can governments continue to rely on epidemiological studies to legislate? Isn’t it time epidemiology takes a few steps back and performs what it was meant to perform – studies of infectious diseases?

Clean your plate: a few extra pounds won't kill you

Weight helps to beat some illnesses, study finds
SHARON KIRKEY, CanWest News Service
Deaths studied were grouped into three major categories: cardiovascular disease, cancer and all other causes.
For each cause, the team estimated excess deaths in each category of body mass index, or BMI. A BMI of 25 to less than 30 is considered overweight; a BMI of 30 and over is obese.
Someone who is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs 174 to 208 pounds would be considered overweight, according to their BMI. More than that, and they're obese.
Obesity - but not overweight - was strongly associated with an increased risk of dying from coronary heart disease, stroke or other forms of cardiovascular disease, accounting for 112,159 excess deaths in the United States in 2004.
The team estimates that obesity is associated "with somewhere between nine and 13 per cent of all cardiovascular mortality," said lead author Katherine Flegal, senior research scientist at the Centres for Disease Control in Hyattsville, Md.
Overall, the team found no association between obesity and cancer deaths when all cancers, including lung cancer, were grouped together.
"We're not trying to say overweight is protective," Flegal said, but there is some evidence higher weights are associated with better survival when you get sick.


We have in the past referred you to Sandy Szwarc’s , BSN, RN, CCP blog, who in her own words performs ‘’ Critical examinations of studies and news on food, weight, health and healthcare that mainstream media misses. ‘’ . She has analyzed the latest report from the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research that appeared this week in the news everywhere. Chances are you won’t read her analysis anywhere in the mainstream media so we invite you to read it at: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/11/jfs-exclusive-whats-evidence-cancers.html