It’s still more than three weeks until Halloween, and headlines are already telling us “Don’t feed the fat kids.” Nutrition activists with the British National Obesity Forum are wondering — seriously — whether chubby children should be taken away from their parents. And a new “study” from Temple University in Philadelphia warns that parents shouldn’t be encouraging children to finish their meals. What is wrong with this picture? Plenty.
Fortunately, there’s usually a nugget of common sense buried somewhere among all the hysteria. This week’s came from Paul Robinson, an ordinary reader of the Los Angeles Daily Breeze who shared his two cents in a refreshingly practical Letter to the Editor:
It appears our children are getting a bit chubby, by and large. When I look around, I see those big yellow school buses everywhere. I also see car after car dispensing children at school. Or picking them up from school. What I don’t see are filled bicycle racks at schools, or children walking to or from school. Do you suppose there might be a partial solution to children’s obesity in there somewhere?
