Education needed to help kids escape the weight loss obsession

Coyle

This piece of news scares me. In a world in which one's appearance seems paramount, people seem to be willing to do anything - no matter how embarrassing, painful, and regardless of their health - to boost their looks. I, as a mother, am not holding my breath for the day my 13-year-old daughter asks for money to go for one of those horrific weight-loss surgeries as a reward for her academic merit or as a birthday present.

Weight loss obsession is not just a worldwide trend but an epidemic raging like a wildfire, fuelled by advertising and mega-media outlets like the Internet. No one can accurately estimate the size of weight loss industry. But one can get an idea by just clicking on any website - you are sure to stumble on pop-up ads for magical pills or diet fads that promise to bring a person's weight down overnight.

In an age when kids eat fatty food and hardly get exercise because of lifestyle changes, obesity has become a problem that threatens the well being, mental and physical, of any family.

The old style of fun that kids had after school, running around with friends, playing traditional sports or outdoor activities is fading fast.

Kids today sit for hours, surfing the Net or engrossed in computer games, which have replaced traditional fun play and become a headache of parents - because they often have little control over what their children are exposed to on the Net.

You never know if one day your children will be lured by these quick fixes to weight loss, buying online diet pills, supplements, shake drinks, or syrup claimed at reducing appetite or inducing vomiting, or laxatives, and delivered suddenly to your doorstep. These online products that escape checks by food and drug agencies can actually kill kids obsessed with losing weight. News about foreign stars and celebrities dying after taking cocktails of illegal or even prescribed drugs is truly horrifying. Who would ever think that a skinny looking Michael Jackson also had a weight phobia? (Although the cause of his death has not been officially determined, he was allegedly very thin - 51kg and eating just a meal a day when he died, some reports claimed). Every time such news breaks, it really reminds us how close our kids come to death.

The recent death of Thai teenagers from infections or illnesses caused by substandard dental braces alarms parents about how vulnerable their children are to dangers linked to beauty and fashion.

This brings us to a burning question today - isn't it worthwhile to prevent such tragedies by putting beauty and weight loss in the school curriculum? If we give our kids greater knowledge about weight loss, and clear up myths linked to losing weight, they would not succumb so easily to dangers caused by ignorance and social pressure to look more beautiful.

Put it straight in children's textbooks that one can die from eating disorders caused by dieting. American singer Karen Carpenter can be used as a case in point. The autopsy showed Carpenter's death was due to anorexia nervosa.

Then get children to realise that there are no quick fixes, successful diet fads or miracle cures to losing weight. The only way that works is hitting the gym, exercising regularly, eating healthily with meals of appropriate portions - and sticking with this plan for life.

The final chapter in such a curriculum might be a bit difficult - changing outlooks on beauty. Beauty in the eyes of Western women is attainable if they are very slender.

It is not easy to tell kids to go against world beauty trends driven by many businesses with huge advertising budgets. But we can - and need to - shift their focus from physical beauty to a beauty within, which is more meaningful and immortal.

Prescribing the right outlook on life, educating kids to have self-esteem by striving to achieve useful goals not only for the benefit of themselves, but also others, can be a sustainable and long-term cure to this sad worldwide epidemic.