Episode 126: Is Childhood Obesity a Form of Child Neglect?

Today we are going to talk about childhood obesity.

And I also want to rephrase this and not even just say obesity, but just children that are overweight.

Even if they're not clinically obese, just being overweight applies to this as well.

And I more specifically want to ask a question that most people are probably too afraid to ask.

And that is when a child becomes obese or overweight because of the environment that is created by adults, are we failing that child? Is this a form of child neglect or child abuse? Now, I want to say in preface, I'm not referring to every single overweight child.

And I don't want to say that every single parent of an overweight child is abusive.

That's not where we're going with this.

I know that health is complex.

There are genetic factors to take into consideration.

Of course, medical conditions, certain medications that children may be on.

I also am not oblivious to the fact that socioeconomic status also plays a role here.

You know, we know that poverty affects food choices and some families genuinely struggle to access healthy food.

So I'm, of course, taking all that into account.

But all of this being said, none of this changes one important truth, and that is that children don't buy groceries.

Children don't drive themselves through the drive-thru.

They don't decide what fills the pantry at home.

They don't meal prep.

They don't read nutrition labels.

Children eat what the adults in their lives provide.

And as parents... caregivers and society, we are shaping their food environment long before they're old enough to understand the consequences.

And really this responsibility is enormous.

It's one of the biggest responsibilities we have because food is not just the calories that we're consuming, but it is information for our body.

and every single meal that our child eats tells a child's body how to build itself, and it gives them health for their future.

Every single bite that they're taking is helping create hormones, bones, muscles, immune cells, brain tissue.

skin uh health and trillions of bacteria that make up their gut microbiome we are literally building a human being they are small and as they grow it is the food that they are being given that is going to help them grow and thrive the best there have been so many studies that show that children that ate more vegetables and like fish and certain foods compared to children that ate fast foods they had the children that ate of course the more whole foods had higher iqs had less health issues as they got older and lived longer so many more factors and there's you know studies that are in the works right now that are just diving more into this but this is not a new concept that children need nutrition to be healthy adults yes you can grow up eating junk food and fast food and i know there's going to be so many people hearing this and saying oh well my parents grew up eating you know processed diet or we grew up eating a processed diet and we did just fine and that's not what we're getting at here just fine is not what we should be aiming for first of all as parents we should want to know that we've set our children up for their best success in life iq wise so they can get the best job and thrive and but also to minimize any potential health issues down the line, especially if you have health issues in your genetics already.