Wednesday, June 3, 2009

weight loss and rewards

Yesterday a patient of mine who is a teacher was describing an end of the year party she is organizing for her students. The food provided will be pizza, cake and other assorted high-caloric foods. Clearly, with childhood obesity being the nation's largest health concern, the question arises as to how socially responsible this is? However, what a dilemma! Would a "treat" for this event to children be chicken breast on a bed of salad? A dessert of no-calorie jello? Many of the kids attending this event will not have a weight problem at all. Is it fair to them to only provide caloric-restricted choices?

I am not sure of the answer to this problematic issue. Providing pizza and cake to overweight kids is certainly not helping their weight problem. Only providing low-caloric choices will make the event less fun. What is the correct thing to do?

Perhaps labeling the food items out with caloric counts on a card beside the food choice will allow both parents and children to see the differences. It would be difficult to separate the food chices to different areas because then the overweight children will feel compelled to go to a different area to get their food.

The same issue holds true for adults attending conventions and seminars. Often the hosting entity fails to provide food choices that a re compatible with a weight loss effort. When there is only sandwiches or pizza and chips at a lunchbreak, this becomes very challenging to a person trying to lose weight.

I am interested in your opinions on this, especially teachers. Please feel free to comment.

2 comments:

momovich said...

Of course, learning how to be discerning about food choices should start at a very early age, so the child can be empowered to make the right choice instead of having it foisted upon him/her. Short of that, the parents could get together and choose to provided healthy treats all year long, including pizza and cake (both of which can be made, if not ideal, at least healthier). Not as easy as ordering out, but with a little extra effort (and a little less sugar and fat) both of these items could be a healthy treat.

Anonymous said...

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