Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me

NYT OPINION: Why the New Obesity Guidelines for Kids Terrify Me
By Virginia Sole-Smith
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 26, 2023 at 02:00AM

The guidelines are rooted in a premise that should have been rejected long ago: that weight loss is the best path to health and happiness.

This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its first comprehensive guidelines for evaluating and treating children and adolescents with obesity. The paper, co-written by 21 prominent doctors, health researchers and obesity experts, advises health care providers that they may refer children as young as 2 years old to “intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment” programs if they have a body mass index in the overweight or obese range. For children ages 12 and up with an obese B.M.I., doctors are encouraged to prescribe weight-loss medications and to offer those over age 13 with severe obesity a referral to a bariatric surgery center.
The paper’s authors see this new guidance as a brave leap forward in the fight against childhood obesity, which they frame as a “complex and often persistent disease” requiring early and aggressive treatment.
But the guidelines are rooted in a premise that should have been rejected long ago: that weight loss is the best path to health and happiness.
The academy’s guidelines are the latest sally in the war on obesity that health care providers, public health officials and the general public have waged to shrink our bodies for over 40 years. The approach hasn’t worked; Americans, including kids, are not getting thinner.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/opinion/aap-obesity-guidelines-bmi-wegovy-ozempic.html