Baby Fat Fandango

Several news stories last week tried to hit us parents over the head with the commonsense notion that it’s unhealthy for our children to be fat.

The first story, from NPR’s Shots health blog, features an eye-catching photo of a ripply Michelin Man-esque baby’s torso, shown from the chin down—the kind of image we see all the time on the evening news in stories about obese adults; you see a middle-aged man’s Hawaiian shirt-clad belly bouncing down the street, but the cameraman kindly doesn’t show the man’s face to preserve his anonymity. We’re not used to seeing that vantage point on a baby, yet that’s the point of the story: The Institute of Medicine has found that “the number of overweight kids and adolescents in the U.S. has almost tripled since the 1980s.”

The headline, “To Curb Childhood Obesity, Experts Say Keep Baby Fat In Check,” tops a story that goes on to tell us that although cherubic babies may be considered adorable, being overweight from an early age may carry some serious health repercussions later in life, such as a higher likelihood of developing high blood pressure or diabetes. So we should be working to dispel the notion that baby fat is something kids will one day outgrow.

Another study gained media attention last week. The American Academy of Pediatrics says we should dial back our kids’ exposure to “the media,” including TV, the Internet and video games. All that sedentary amusement is contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic, reported as well by NPR’s Shots blog. The story also said that children under 2 shouldn’t watch any TV at all, a rule I broke almost immediately during maternity leave with both of my kids. I suppose now that means I should be turning my 13-month-old son away from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse whenever my 3 ½-year-old daughter is watching it.

Another news report generated by the same American Academy of Pediatrics study puts a finer point on the detrimental media by playing up the physicians’ call for a ban on junk food and fast food advertisements during TV shows geared toward children, according to HealthDay.

When I read stories like these about this kind of research, a neon sign flashing the word “moderation” immediately appears in my mind’s eye. My completely unprofessional, un-medical degreed opinion on this is that if we deprive our children of the occasional ice cream cone or TV show, then we are setting them up for a greater desire for those taboo things and leading them to overindulge.

The pediatricians also recommend eating meals together as a family to keep obesity at bay, but to achieve that goal, I often let my kids watch Mickey, Donald and Goofy for 20 minutes so I can cook dinner. I just can’t imagine that that means to an end is such a bad thing. (And did I mention that my daughter knows all about three-dimensional shapes now thanks to an episode of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?) I think it’s a matter of personal judgment, and using the bad to facilitate a little bit of good.