Virginia Sole-Smith, a fat activist, has sparked controversy by saying that childhood obesity is not the problem, but anti-fat prejudice, and that she lets her children eat whatever they want.
She is the author of ‘Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture’ and an advocate for dismantling diet culture and anti-fat bias.
“We’re not parents about body size,” Sole-Smith said on the Pressure Cooker podcast. ‘How your child eats and how much he moves his body is really the smallest piece of the puzzle. “When you focus on that with the goal of controlling your child’s weight, you do a lot of harm.”
While Sole-Smith’s book is a New York Times bestseller and many turn to her for parenting advice, others believe she is promoting a dangerous lifestyle.
“It is not okay to be overweight, it is not okay to eat excess sugar and animal fats, it is not okay to eat junk food, it is not okay not to move your body, it is not okay to defend that being overweight is a good thing,” Caroline Hailstone. she said in one of Sole-Smith’s Instagram posts.
Virginia Sole-Smith (pictured), author of ‘Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture’, said childhood obesity is not a problem, anti-fat bias is.
Sole-Smith said she and her ex-husband, Dan Upham (right), got into a fight when her daughter ate an entire stick of butter and she didn’t want to stop her daughter from eating it.
“Being a healthy weight is fine and having a good layer of body fat is healthy, but recommending an unhealthy diet as you do will only increase diabetes hospital visits and mortality rates.”
Unique-blacksmith said The New York Times In her house they do not label foods as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, and she serves her two children desserts and snacks with dinner.
He said that if parents place restrictions on food, their children won’t be able to figure out how to eat what their bodies need.
While speaking to the Times, the mother of two served them broccoli, chicken and brownies for dinner. After eating a few bites, the girls are allowed to play in the yard and read books at the table.
Sole-Smith began her career working for women’s magazines in the early 2000s and said she was running half marathons at that point in her life.
‘Those were the “you can have it all” years. You’re going for the big job. You are going for the perfect body. You are going for the great marriage. You go for motherhood. You’re going to look for the perfect home,’ he said.
Sole-Smith also said he is against doctors prescribing weight loss and a solution to health problems and that they should treat patients as they are.
‘It doesn’t matter what people’s health status is. Good? Drug addicts are worthy of dignity and respect in healthcare. For example, it doesn’t matter if you caused it, doctors are supposed to find it where it is,” Sole-Smith said.
‘Health is a resource and a privilege that many people do not have access to. Is it healthy for me to eat this broccoli for dinner? Or is it health that today I managed to have a few minutes of connection with my daughter?’
Data show that obesity rates among young people quadrupled globally between 1990 and 2022, the latest year available, while rates among adults more than doubled, the researchers found.
This means that obesity is now the most common form of malnutrition in many countries, according to the study published in the Lancet medical journal.
The obesity rate among American adults increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and from 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men.
Over the same period, the rate nearly doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among American girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys.
According to the CDC, among the top ten causes of death in the United States are heart disease, diabetes, and liver disease.
“I think it’s possible to simultaneously keep in mind that the condition of obesity is concerning and at the same time protect the rights of people who suffer from it,” said Kelly Brownell, professor emeritus of public policy at Duke University.
“You can think of many other parallels, like depression or alcoholism, where you don’t want people who have these things to be stigmatized (that clearly has negative effects), but that doesn’t mean that you dismiss the ravages of those things.” things”. diseases.’
Sole-Smith’s controversial attitude toward what should be considered a healthy diet has sparked a debate that she experienced even in her own marriage.
She told The New York Times that she and her ex-husband, Dan Upham, got into a fight when their daughter ate an entire stick of butter.
The obesity rate among American adults increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and from 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men.
Between 1990 and 2022, the rate nearly doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among American girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys.
Sole-Smith, her daughter, ate the stick because she thought it was cheese and Upham wanted to intervene and stop her from eating it.
“If I put butter on the table and a kid wants to eat it, that’s fine with me,” Sole-Smith said.
The couple announced their separation after 14 years of marriage and almost 25 years together in the summer of 2023.
“We would all be much better off if we were less afraid of divorce, just as we would be much better off if we were less afraid of gaining weight,” he said.
Sole-Smith faced backlash for New York Times op-ed on the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for the treatment of children with obesity.
“We can’t solve anti-fat bias by making fat kids thin,” he said.
Dr. Barry Reiner, a pediatric endocrinologist in Baltimore, criticized Sole-Smith for not recognizing that weight can have an impact on children’s health.
“Additional complications of childhood obesity include ovarian dysfunction, liver and cardiovascular damage, disabling orthopedic conditions, and sleep apnea, among others,” Reiner said in a letter to the editor.
“In every case where we are able to alter the trajectory of unhealthy weight gain in a child, we are markedly improving the likelihood that that child will have a normal life expectancy and quality of life.”
