Health professionals are often getting it wrong when it comes to our children’s weight, providing damaging advice, says obesity expert Dr Nick Fuller.
A fixation with an “ideal” weight range is driving poor advice, including that young children be put on diets.
“They rely too heavily on weight-for-age charts. And when a child is not falling within the ideal weight-for-age range, they’re prescribing diets and advising food restriction. This is incorrect and damaging advice.” “It’s a very small part of their tertiary education, but it’s such an important part of shaping a child’s trajectory when it comes to health and weight,” says the father of two.
“I think we are far too focused on healthy weight range,” South says, adding that “additional dangers” of a restrictive dieting mentality include a lifetime of poor body image and eating behaviours. “It’s not the actual value that’s important, it’s the trajectory over time,” she says. “You want to see kids following percentile lines.”
“A lot of the advice is all or nothing and ‘if you do this or don’t do that’ they will be damaged for life,” says the 35-year-old. “You start stressing and that creates a bad environment around food.”
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