This is Wrong on So Many Levels

In a story reported on The Blaze, Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston, said it might be better for the child to let child protective services remove obese children from their homes and put them in foster care than to leave them at home.  For reasons I don't understand, he appears to think the alternative is forcing surgery on the child. 

This is so wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start, so let's start here. 

I have two big concerns with Dr. Ludwig's proposal: first is that this idea morphs from something borne of medical “concern” into just another ploy to get children out of a family home, where they become walking bundles of cash to the state systems that feed on the “care” for these kids: 

As Baskerville points out in his horrifying study Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, "it is no exaggeration to say that the existence of family courts, and virtually every issue they adjudicate -- divorce, custody, child abuse, child-support enforcement, even adoption and juvenile crime -- depend on one overriding principle: remove the father." When a family is broken up, each child "becomes a walking bundle of cash" -- not for the custodial parent, but for a huge and expanding population of tax-fattened functionaries who "adopt as their mission in life the practice of interfering with other people's children."

I think that CPS, like everything else that governments do in general, has gone from occasionally helpful to almost completely tyrannical.  The actions of child protective services are the reason that Thomas Bell burned himself to death, about a month ago, and that William Grigg talked about here.  It's why a Georgia mom was investigated for having some food storage and subjected to absurd accusations such as “being in a top secret agency against the government”.  (h/t Preparedness Pro)

The other big problem I have with this is the fact that medicine is exceptionally bad at treating obesity.  I (and many others) would suggest that the diet the doctors are recommending is probably the cause of the kids' obesity.  Would it surprise you to know that a leading researcher who has been studying obesity for decades believes dieting may be the cause of most obesity?  A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece on some truths about diet and fitness that are hard to get out.  It's not a stretch to say that if you're like most people who haven't studied this, everything you think you know is probably wrong.

“So what's the big idea?  Everybody knows how to treat obesity: eat a little less; exercise a little more is the answer.”  Unfortunately, no.  While saying that losing weight requires taking in less energy than you use is something everyone knows, that approach is remarkably unsuccessful at treating obesity.  It's true that probably anyone can lose weight on a short term, calorie-restricted diet, but the result is an almost universal rebound in which weight returns to the starting point – or higher.  Doesn't everybody know this? 

Researchers have known it for almost 200 years.  You can think of that statement about calories – energy balance – as being information-free.  It conveys no useful information about treating the unbalance.

The diet they're recommending for the kids is causing their obesity?  As Gary Taubes said in his NY Times article, What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie,

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

The Food Pyramid that has been put out as gospel since the early 80s says to eat mostly carbohydrate with little meat and less fat.  The alternative hypothesis, which is really just the contents of a first course in endocrinology, is that because of the effects they have on insulin and blood sugar, carbohydrates are uniquely fattening.  It's because of this that the Dr.s Eades refer to the food pyramid as th Hog Fattening Diet.  Weight loss diets were researched widely since the 1800s, and the world's first diet book, from the 1860s, said reducing carbohydrate intake was the way to lose weight.  The British undertaker William Banting wrote a best-selling book, “Letter on Corpulence”, in which he discussed his efforts to lose weight, including exercise and various attempts at diet.   

Soy protein appears to be toxic to the thyroid in many people.  Soy protein is often recommended for widespread consumption as a way to reduce consumption of animal fat. We believe Mrs. Graybeard was hurt by the recommendations to eat soy, and needed to adjust her intake of thyroid hormone.  A Bing search returns 579,000 hits on “soy thyroid damage” - I'm sure many are from folks (cough, ADM, cough) who say there's no problem.  This New Zealand web site reports that “Theodore Kay of the Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine noted in 1988 that 'thyroid enlargement in rats and humans, especially children and women, fed with soybeans has been known for half a century'.”   

It's hard to envision a situation in which it's good to give children over to foster care instead of leaving them in a loving home.  I'm sure what Dr. Ludwig is trying to do is to get “allowing” your child to be obese classified as child abuse.  I'm sure there's no reason to think it might eventually morph from obese into just overweight, then mildly overweight, or, perhaps too blonde or allowing them too much time in the sun.  Oh, no, there's never any evidence of over reach on the government's part.

By, the way: been camping with your kids? 

Edit:  2115 EDT   Two bad links fixed.