Obesity

[Dystopia]

I saw a family today, parents and 2 pre-teen children, all of them shockingly obese. They were walking, or rather waddling, along the road stuffing their mouths with yet more food. They were British, too.

Now, I'm a believer that adults are entitled to do pretty much what they want with their bodies: drink, smoke, extreme sports etc. I post on a rugby forum and some of the injury anecdotes there are pretty bad. But that's adults. (Who pays for it is a different issue.)

But it seems to me that allowing your children to get that obese, in the knowledge - if they understand it - that the child will likely have multiple health problems, and die young, represents child abuse. If it wasn't for the fact that the care system in Britain is terrible, with very poor outcomes, I'd suggest that the children should be taken into care. As it is, I guess there's not very much that can be done. Maybe social services could intervene.

Very disturbing.

I wouldn't go as far as considering it child abuse. This is something that is volatile to different considerations depending on the concrete case - Some parents are uneducated and ignorant, they may not be aware that obesity is that bad, they may think being fat is a sign of wealth, etc. I do agree that social services could intervene, but still I think the best bet is education.

The problem here is that there's nothing to accuse parents of - Are we going to accuse them of feeding their children too much food? That sounds a bit silly. And let's not forget slippery slope. Should it be considered child abuse too if parents don't put their kids into sports? After all, sports are healthy.

And when do we let teenagers make their own decisions? I'll give you my example, when I was 14 years old I started smoking, my mother knew, but she didn't do anything - Prohibition would make things worse - Do you think she should be accused of child abuse for letting me smoke and get addicted?

I prefer education over prohibition and lawsuits/charges, but that's just my opinion.