Americans are caught in a contradictory cultural schism. If a girl is thin, parents feel like they need to have an intervention. But we are in a war on obese people and politicians are responding to that by banning everything that looks like it can pass the legislature. Pressure to be thin may be making girls fat – except in Europe, where impossibly attractive naked women are on public billboards.Are Americans so fat because of too much pressure to be thin?A JAMA Pediatrics paper believes so, and finds that girls who are told by a parent, sibling, friend, classmate or teacher that they are too fat at age 10 made them more likely to be obese at age 19.
Meanwhile, every epidemiology study being done shows that the rampant obesity in young people can only be halted by implementing stricter diet choices. How do you change a child’s diet without implying they are fat?The psychologists looked at 1,213 African-American girls and 1,166 white girls living in Northern California, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., 58 percent of whom said they had been told they were too fat at age 10. All the girls had their height and weight measured at the beginning of the study and again after nine years.
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