Seventy years ago, the American public loved a catchy tune whose lyric proclaimed, “We belong to a mutual admiration society.” The song celebrated a romantic relationship where each partner vied to outdo the other in proving their devotion.
Today, as Childhood Obesity News has mentioned more than once, our way of life embraces and encourages a “mutual demolition society,” where obesity and poverty tirelessly compete to see which one of them can do the most damage. Obesity leads to poverty, and as surely as night follows day, poverty leads to obesity, in a futile reciprocal see-saw effect that shows no sign of improving any time soon.
Ongoing folly
It has been argued for years that the medical profession and several government agencies waste a ton of resources in the service of a (mistaken) belief that gathering the Body Mass Index statistics of children is the ultimate road toward solving the childhood obesity problem. However, this view is not shared by all scientists in the field.
In 2014, Rodney Steadman wrote,
The BMI has become a big problem for some researchers… BMI does not accurately measure body fat in individuals with a high level of lean body mass (body weight minus the fat) and some ethnic groups. Furthermore, the BMI can be difficult to calculate in field settings when body weight cannot be accurately measured.
Meanwhile, parents who simply did not care for the whole idea argued with schools, and some challenged the ultimate usefulness of BMI information. As the Toronto Sun described in 2015, cultural and economic factors are involved:
[…] BMI information alone may not be enough to help parents in high poverty areas where fresh produce and safe playgrounds to encourage exercise may not be available.
Around the same time, a study found that BMI measurement failed to identify “as many as 25% of children, age 4 to 18 years, who have excess body fat.” The Mayo Clinic’s director of preventive cardiology, Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, said, “BMI is not capturing everybody who needs to be labeled as obese.”
And if they pass…
If someone is officially labeled obese, what then? That person now holds the credential of eligibility for bariatric surgery.
Leaving all other factors aside for the sake of discussion, it is possible to question the benefit of bariatric surgery overall. It cannot be considered a societal good to have a large proportion of society’s members absorbed by the overwhelmingly intense preparation agenda for an operation like this.
In contrast to even a limited public existence, the mundane routine of a person gearing up for, or recovering from, this type of procedure is not easy. For practical purposes, like holding down a job, the patient may be quite unable to conduct anything like a normal life.
However much of a blessing it may be in a particular case, in the long run, for that person, bariatric surgery is a very life-consuming project in terms of burning up time, energy, goodwill, money, and other resources.
Then, after the actual procedure, there is a similarly unproductive spell, as the patient is, to a greater or lesser degree, disabled for a considerable period of time. Even barring any unexpected side effects, there are new routines to learn and new norms to become accustomed to, on every side.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Teresa Brewer ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ on The Ed Sullivan Show,” YouTube.com, undated
Source: “Absurd, but True,” WordPress.com, 07/15/14
Source: “Screening teens for obesity may not help them lose weight,” TorontoSun.com, 07/03/15
Image by geralt/Pixabay
FAQs and Media Requests: 
