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Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens in Weight Crisis
Francie M. Berg Manufacturer: Healthy Weight Publishing Network ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback  Adolescent Psychology
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ASIN: 0918532523 |
Amazon.com
Afraid to Eat, by nutritionist Frances M. Berg, an internationally known authority on weight and eating, challenges America's obsession with weight and documents the terrible harm done by the quest for thinness. Afraid to Eat presents a convincing and terrifying message: diets don't work; in fact, they are killing children. The statistics are terrifying, riveting, angering. One in five teenagers is overweight. By age 11, most girls are no longer eating normally and many have potentially fatal eating disorders. Two-thirds of teenage girls in the U.S. have abnormal eating behavior, and half are severely undernourished. More and more teens are smoking for weight control. And the majority of children and adolescents have become afraid to eat.Berg examines four major problems: eating disorders, dysfunctional eating, size prejudice, and being overweight. She discusses the forces that have contributed to these problems, and provides workable approaches to helping children learn to eat normally and attain the Canadian "Vitality" model of wellness: eating well, living actively, and reducing stress.
Book Description
Young people today are growing up with a deep fear of fat. It's a fear that consumes them, shatters lives, and even kills. They live in a culture that tells them their bodies are wrong and promotes destructive values through media, advertising and entertainment industries."Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping Youth in Today's Weight-Obsessed World" offers the nutrition profession's strongest challenge to date to America's obsession with thinness, laying bare its tragic results. In this book Frances M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, extensively documents the harm done in children's lives. Berg says it is a serious health crisis when more than two-thirds of high school girls are dieting, less than half are fully nourished, one-third are smoking, and one-fifth take diet pills, all in their desperate drive to be thinner. Teenage boys mirror these problems to a lesser extent.
Now in its third, completely revised and updated edition, this book shines the spotlight even more clearly than before on the six major problems driving this crisis — dysfunctional eating, undernourishment of teen girls, hazardous weight loss, eating disorders, size prejudice and overweight. All are increasing and striking at ever younger ages.
In the second half "Children and Teens Afraid to Eat" gives clear guidelines in how to deal with this crisis in health-centered ways. Thus, it offers more than a penetrating analysis of a major public health problem — it is also a how-to book of practical solutions, with action steps that parents, teachers, counselors and health providers can take now to promote health and well-being. The earlier edition, "Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens in Weight Crisis" is being used extensively in schools, health clinics and in-service training programs across the U.S. and Canada.
Berg's companion book "Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today's Weight- Obsessed World" documents the same problems for women. Both books show how the medical profession's insistence on ideal weight as a national priority has reinforced and validated the obsession with size and shape. But instead of improved health, the efforts to help people manage their weight have backfired, failing at weight loss and contributing to an epidemic of body dissatisfaction.
Berg who is editor of Healthy Weight Journal advocates a health at any size approach in which people of all sizes receive consistent messages to "eat well, live actively and feel good about yourself and others," based on the Canadian Vitality program. To normalize eating, parents are urged to first end their own dieting, then teach children regular eating habits and to tune in to hunger and fullness signals.
Together the two Afraid to Eat books, both with 21st century copyrights, offer a treasure trove of new information, charts, tips and how-to suggestions. They provide a wealth of research and insight for speakers, writers and students at all levels. Both are highly recommended by health, nutrition and library sources for both consumers and professionals. Excerpts available online at the website.
Customer Reviews:
How to break free of weight obsession.......2001-03-13
Children & Teens Afraid to Eat, Helping Youth in Today's Wei.......2001-01-15
We want to think our youth are active and healthy. During my years of teaching, I have been more and more disturbed at inactivity of our children, disruption of normal eating, and the amount of fat and sugar calories served in school lunch rooms.
The food the children who carry their lunch bring from home can be nourishing, but parents might be surprised if they watch their children eat. A child's lunch sack might have a good turkey sandwich with greens, two large cookies, a bar of candy, and a soft drink. The child almost always has the candy ond/or cookies at recess. When lunchtime comes, he often throws that good sandwich in the trash with the apple. The food he brought from home has now become two cookies, candy, and a soft drink.
During recess too many children are inactive. Day after day, we watched the same ones stand around talking all recess while they eat their candy or cookies. After observing this for a few years, we scheduled a quarter-mile run twice a week and a full mile on Friday for P. E. Also, three times a week we have exercises appropriate to the age groups. You'd be surprised how many look forward to all the activity once they get used to it. We think it also stimulates brain activity in the classroom.
On the other hand, there are the healthy, active children who might have a cookie at recess, then play hard. They eat their sandwich and apple at lunch and the cookies and are eaten or saved for after school. In these children's lunch boxes there is porbably no candy. What's happening here? Berg says studies show that parents that don't "bug" their children about eating, produce children who don't have hang-ups about eating.
Berg writes that research shows that family attitudes can play a big part in the future eating patterns of their children. When a healthy baby's hunger is satisfied, it will then stop drinking. Parents who "urge him to finish the bottle, disguise cereal with applesauce to get it down" and thus feel frustrated for fear the baby isn't eating enough, is teaching the infant that it's important to eat more than his body needs. All parents should read carefully and think about what Berg has to say.
A parent who "hesitates to let a chubby toddler have seconds, makes a preschooler stay at the table until she finishes her peas, insists that the child eat `two bites of each food,' or lectures a school-age child to get him to drink his milk...is overmanaging, and it teaches children to ignore their natural signals of hunger and satiety."
By allowing a child to listen and heed these natural signals, Berg tells us that this is an important way to begin the youngster on a lifetime of healthy eating patterns.
Americans serve too large portions. A friend of mine returned from a long vacation in England and remarked that she didn't see an overweight English person all the time she was there. I said I was surprised, I always thought Britons were gluttons. She said she did, too, but she didn't see any.
Berg tells why. "A Healthy Weight Journal subscriber in London sent me an article titled: `Portions all out of Proportion' that decried `America's elephantine cuisine.' The writer compares national foods: hot dogs (350 calories in the U.S. versus 150 calories in Britain), cookies (493 vs. 65), ice cream cone (625 vs.160), muffin (705 vs. 158), and a meal of steak and fries (2,060 vs. 730). Until recently, our very large muffins were called "jumbo muffins," the article notes, now they are simply `muffins.' " Apparently, we are the ones who have become the nation of gluttons.
Berg says that even some our food that is considered healthy, non-junk food is astoundingly high in calories. And the more a child above the age of 3 is served, the more he eats. Big portions promote over-eating. Berg says studies show that our school-age children are getting heavier every year. Younger and younger children are becoming anorexic to stay slim, an astounding number alternately diet and binge. These patterns used to be found among those high school age and older, now they appear among elementary children.
Berg says problems such as eating disorders, dysfunctional eating, undernutrition of teenage girls trying to be thin, hazardous weight loss, and size prejudice all are increasing. Surprisingly, all that can be prevented. The author, Francie Berg, when asked why she wrote this book, says she grows more and more concerned about the appalling research on children and youth eating problems. The true facts were there, but no one was telling those who need to know: our parents and teachers.
Now that she's telling us-we need to listen.
Berg's research is well done. Anyone who doubts what she writes, can read the studies for themselves as her sources are well documented.
Jeanie T.
A cultural commentary with practical advice.......2000-04-06
The first step to help, is to help understand the roots of the problem. This book does that. It points out the many ways in which we are not nurturing our children, particularly our girls. We are a society that has become fatter and fatter, yet simultaneously bombards our kids with the message that they need to achieve a body size and shape that is biologically unsustainable for the majority of them. This may be the seed for eating disorders. How high levels of obesity and disordered eating and starving teens can coexist is explained. AFRAID TO EAT explores the many forces at play....cultural expectations, media, the role of family and athletics, peer pressure, and more. It explores the issue of size rejudice and lifestyle choices, both of which lead to eating disorders and obesity.
The second half of the book focuses on how to prevent eating disorders, how to make changes to promote normal eating where it doesn't exist, and how to intervene with childhood obesity. There are guidelines for healthy food choices, designs for new health approaches for families, how to include schools in prevention programs, and finally a call to action that challenges us to make changes in attitude (e.g. a greater appreciation for healthy lifestyles versus being thin), lifestyle (e.g. active living, improving phys ed programs in school), prevention (e.g. by promoting healthy attitudes and lifestyles and developing special prevention programs for schools and communities), health care (e.g. reduce size prejudice in health care, focus on improving health, not on ineffective weight loss) and knowledge ( e.g. improved communication to consumers, better education in medical school).
There is useful information in this book not only for a parent, but also for teachers and health care workers. Perhaps after reading it you can share it with your school nurse or phys ed teacher. I am sure you will find its approach not only informative but practical and useful. The word 'vitality' is used a lot in this book as it helps us focus eating away from dieting and size/shape obsession towards eating that promotes a healthy and 'vital' lifestyle.
I work as a professional nutritionist and see firsthand the consequences of the fear of eating. This book takes a big stab at addressing the revolutionary changes that need to be made in our personal and societal approaches towards eating. I recommend it to any who want to join in that revolution, or simply wish to help their own kids enjoy nutritious, guilt free eating for life.
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