When reason is thrown out with the (fat) baby and the bathwater.
This illustrates perfectly the insanity surrounding the irrational need to convert fatties to the cult of slenderness. “This” being this study in which the design says:
“This study was a randomized, controlled, school-based trial involving 1704 children in 41 schools and was conducted over 3 consecutive years, from 3rd to 5th grades, in schools serving American Indian communities in Arizona, New Mexico, and South Dakota. The intervention had 4 components: 1) change in dietary intake, 2) increase in physical activity, 3) a classroom curriculum focused on healthy eating and lifestyle, and 4) a family-involvement program. The main outcome was percentage body fat; other outcomes included dietary intake, physical activity, and knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.”
Historically, particular ethnic groups don’t do so well when exposed to the modern Western diet and/or lifestyle. Groups such as Indigenous Australians, Native Americans, Polynesians, the Irish and others. Specifically, they get fat. As a friend of mine wrote:
“…the implicit, and racist, assumptions are that when we give these people fast food, beer, cars and televisions: instead of being noble savages who are all buff and healthy from a lifestyle of chasing kangaroos (or local ruminant of your choice), they show no self-control at the smorgasboard of the goodies (!) that western life offers and get fat. The logic then becomes one of blame. The problem is obviously behavioral, and the solution is paternalistic. Let’s educate the poor fellows so they can make informed choices about health and nutrition. And this is what happens…”
The idea being, as my friend continues to comment, we teach these native kiddies all the knowledge, discipline and self-restraint of their white counterparts, and subsequently, they won’t get fat.
The problem being that it didn’t work. Don’t be confused though, the kids and their families got the message. Behaviours and attitudes changed, both the percentage of fat and total calories in diet dropped, they ran around as much as the skinny kids and displayed impressive knowledge of health and nutrition dogma.
But they stayed fat.
These kids learned all the lessons and behaviours they were supposed to, but the researchers’ conclusion after a 3 year intervention?
“More intense or longer interventions may be needed to significantly reduce adiposity in this population.”
*headdesk*
A more reasonable response would be to acknowledge that the successful application of current approved models and practices for controlling obesity didn’t work and that the current body of nutritional knowledge is no applicable to all people.
But that would be, of course, far too reasonable…
Thanks to Indigo for the content of this post.
Those interventions don’t work for white people, what on earth made them think they would for any other race? It’s because they’ve convinced themselves that they have the right answer, and even though that answer has been proved wrong time after time after time, they can’t bear to admit that they don’t know it all (and never did).
You know, it’s funny. Hubby came into the room as I was reading this and wondered what had me so disgusted. When I told him, he thought I was kidding. I had to show him the words on the screen before he’d believe me. “What the hell are they doing putting kids that young on what’s basically a diet??” he asked. When I told him that BABIES are now being put on calorie-controlled diets… you should have seen his face. When I told him the world was going NUTS, I wasn’t exaggerating.
But yeah… how much longer are we going to have to watch these people vainly try to prove their ridiculous and inaccurate theories? How many more CHILDREN are going to be basically TORTURED before they’ll finally admit they were wrong?
[...] the author’s wholehearted subscription to the popular media’s propaganda that fat and overweight are caused by eating fried, high-fat-content foods and that those foods, as well as being overweight or obese, leads to heart attacks and [...]
What Vesta said. Plus it REEKS of paternalistic white-man’s burden bullshit. Dear god.
Isn’t this one of the studies that Gina Kolata talked about in Rethinking Thin? It sounds like the same study population and I remember the one she described being very large and sweeping too. I never considered the colonialist implications as you mention in the entry… and I totally agree about the flabbergasting degree of bullheadedness that would be needed to see the results of one of the most intensive “childhood obesity” interventions ever, documented in a huge, well-designed study–results which clearly indicated the interventions did not have an effect–and still conclude that it was just more of the same that was needed. These people (and I mean most who study obesity, not just these particular authors) are supposed to be critical thinkers. Their stubborn adherence to an a priori idea that has not been proven to be true–that is, if you just educate people about nutrition, make them restrict calories and exercise, and improve the quality of their diet, they’ll lose weight–borders on the disgusting.