American Academy of Pediatrics encourage surgery and drugs to combat childhood obesity in new guidelines

In an era when “fat-shaming” is strongly discouraged and exercise has been redefined as being racist, the honest discussions needed to address the epidemic of childhood obesity are off-limits while radical recommendations including drugs and weight-loss surgery are being pitched as solutions by the so-called experts.

This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its first new guidance on the national health crisis of obese kids in fifteen years, calling for aggressive treatments to address the problem including medication for children as young as 12 years old and surgery for 13-year-olds, recommendations that drew a strong reaction from some who lashed out at the largest association of pediatricians in the United States.

Already a major crisis with poor eating habits, sedentary lifestyles, and bad parenting contributing to a tripling of childhood obesity rates over the past three decades, leading to one in three kids being overweight or obese, the COVID response including lockdowns, remote learning, and a lack of sports and extracurricular social activities further contributed to a problem that will plague the youngest Americans later in life.

In the new guidelines, the AAP discouraged the longtime practice of “watchful waiting,” or waiting to see if a child grows out of early chubbiness in favor of the more aggressive approach of intervention using drugs and surgeries to remedy the situation at earlier ages.

“Waiting doesn’t work,” said guidance co-author Dr. Ihuoma Eneli, according to CBS News. “What we see is a continuation of weight gain and the likelihood that they’ll have (obesity) in adulthood.”

(Video: CBS Philadelphia)

According to co-author Dr. Sandra Hassink, medical director for the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood weight, the new guidelines aim to change the view of obesity as “a personal problem, maybe a failure of the person’s diligence.”

“This is not different than you have asthma and now we have an inhaler for you,” she said.

But Fox News medical contributor Nicole Saphier, M.D. expresses a different viewpoint, writing in a column on the American Academy of Pediatrics updated guidelines that cultural factors play a role in contributing to the childhood obesity problem.

“Teen-sensation pop star Lizzo, is known for speaking out about her weight. ‘When I was a little girl, all I wanted to see was me in the media was someone fat like me, Black like me, beautiful like me,’ she said receiving an Emmy award in 2022,” Saphier wrote. “A recent TIME magazine interview even suggested exercise to be an activity with roots in White supremacy. The piece, titled ‘The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise,’ describes how exercise began in the early 1900s by white Americans seeking to strengthen their race amid increasing immigration.”

“Advocacy groups have even created a Plus Size Appreciation Day to ‘remind ourselves that when it comes to beauty, one size doesn’t fit all…celebrate the curves that men and women everywhere rock,'” she adds. “It is important to note, Plus Size Appreciation Day is only recognized in the United States, not internationally. Perhaps that is because in most high-income countries, around two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. In the U.S., 70 percent are.”

“To sum it up, the messages being delivered are, discussing weight is bad and exercising is racist,” Dr. Saphier concludes. “No wonder childhood obesity is up.”

Twitter users weighed in on the AAP’s controversial new guidelines.

In addition to the childhood obesity crisis, there is also a crisis when it comes to health “experts” in the U.S. and the AAP guidance isn’t much of a remedy when it comes to restoring confidence.

Chris Donaldson

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