A recent report from CBS News asserts that medical experts are pushing for children as young as 12 years old who are “struggling with obesity” to be prescribed various “drugs” and possibly undergo “surgery” to address their weight-related issues. But with an increasing distrust of Big Pharma coupled with the growing outlook that today’s youth are becoming collectively overmedicated, the idea that purported experts are pointing to drugs and surgery for weight loss solutions amongst children isn’t exactly helping the aforesaid sentiments.
There’s a bit of a modern adage that goes something like, ‘There’s a pill for that,’ which, depending on the context, can sometimes be used as a quip in response to having seen someone’s erratic behavior or jokingly responding to a problem they vocalized.
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But the adage can also serve as a deeper bit of social commentary, often being an expression of consternation in response to today’s generation being served up medication from seemingly every direction under the medical establishment’s promise that nearly every problem or minor inconvenience in life can be solved with just a few pills.
With the abovementioned in mind, it’s both unsettling and hardly surprising to see a report from CBS News published on January 9th that is titled, “Consider drugs and surgery early for obesity in kids, new guidelines say: ‘Waiting doesn’t work.'”
I mean, there's also the time-tested, non-surgical/pharmaceutical intervention-based method of a more balanced diet and regular exercise (or, as we called it when I was a kid, playing outside). https://t.co/1FVqK5iPJf
— Greg Hoyt (@GregHoytLET) January 9, 2023
Per the CBS News report, “new guidelines” released earlier in January suggest that kids who are “struggling with obesity should be evaluated and treated early and aggressively, including with medications for kids as young as 12 and surgery for those as young as 13.”
Dr. Ihuoma Eneli is among those medical professionals pushing this narrative of giving children pills and recommending surgery if weight-related issues crop up, justifying the employment of such radical measures by coupling it with the general truism that children who become and remain obese during their childhood will live their adult lives obese.
“Waiting doesn’t work. What we see is a continuation of weight gain and the likelihood that they’ll have (obesity) in adulthood.”
While there’s truth in the statement that untreated obesity in children often results in obesity in adulthood, it doesn’t mean that the appropriate approach to tackling obesity among youths should be done through the employment of drugs and surgeries.
In fact, there happens to be an age-old method to dealing with obesity that requires exactly zero drugs and surgeries: a balanced diet and regular exercise.
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There’s this remarkable thing known as a “calorie deficit,” which will, without a doubt, lead to people losing unwanted body fat.
“To lose weight, you need to eat and drink fewer calories than you burn. That’s called a calorie deficit. If you take in more than calories than you burn, then you don’t have a calorie deficit and you won’t lose weight. There are two ways to raise your calorie deficit: changing what and how much you eat, and exercise. Most doctors and nutritionists suggest a combination of both for healthy weight loss.”
Sure, calorie deficits aren’t exactly the most pleasant when first starting them up, but the science of calories in versus calories out is irrefutable. The fact of the matter is that obesity, whether in children or adults, is a direct result of the individuals in question having had consumed more calories than what they actively burn on a daily basis.
Furthermore, nobody is actually born obese (although a small percentage of babies are born slightly larger than the average weight, a condition known as fetal macrosomia, which typically stems from diabetic or obese mothers whilst carrying their child to term).
In reality, an obese child is a direct reflection of their levels of caloric consumption and their ostensibly lacking physical activity – all of which are areas that could (and should) be quickly and adequately addressed by a parent inside of the home of the child.
But therein lies the issue at hand: what were the parents doing while their kids were becoming obese? Well, when looking at the numbers cited by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, it appears that obese parents have a tendency to pass off their eating habits to their children.
“A child with one obese parent has a 50 percent chance of being obese. When both parents are obese, their children have an 80 percent chance of obesity.”
This is hardly a surprising conclusion.
Children are quite impressionable and will often emulate who they look up to, such as their parents. Thus, if you have a parent or parents in the household who seldom exercise and overindulges at every meal, the kids in the household are likely to do the same thing.
Yet, in today’s society, we’re literally having medical professionals push the solution to childhood obesity as being pills and surgery rather than prescribing the harsh reality that parents need to be better role models and impose a semblance of constructive structure in their children’s lives.
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