Tonight I read some extracts from a UK School Health Education Unit report called “Young People Into 2011”. The headlines about the report tell us that about one third of primary school girls are missing their meals and are unhappy with their weight. I’m only a little surprised because there’s so much media coverage of teenage girls who are unhappy with their body image. Read full article
Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital Boston, contributed to an article in the American Medical Association Journal calling for consideration of protecting morbidly obese children in extreme cases by temporarily removing them from their parents. One of the arguments is that this would be better than risks associated with bariatric surgery for example. Discussion on Sunrise Channel 7 with Yvette Vignando about the Australian situation. Read full article
When baby boys are born, they usually look close to perfect - their parents gaze at them with the rose-coloured glasses that are issued to all new mums and dads. And apart from snotty noses, muddy knees and bruised shins, those little boys remain cherub-like in the eyes of their parents until their early teen years. By then, teenage boys are starting to define and compare themselves with others and will be making efforts to show how different they are from their doting parents. Enter the influence of the media, the movies, peers and reality television, and all of a sudden a teenage boy notices that his muscles are not as bulked up as his favourite television show character, and his hair is not as straight and cool as the popular boys in his year. Read full article
