“Healthy” at any cost

Why aren’t the headlines shouting:

Two out of three of our young girls are at risk!

Over recent years everyone is getting on the health bandwagon and our young people are the special focus of unrelenting, pervasive messages to eat healthy, live healthy lifestyles, and be healthy and fit. Evidence of good behavior is looking healthy, which most everyone believes means looking slim. Literally trillions of dollars from public and private funds are being spent on research and initiatives to prevent and treat the “epidemic of obesity” in the name of “health.”

The escalating focus on health is resulting in increasing numbers, especially young women, feeling afraid for their health, afraid of their food and badly about their bodies, which can never meet today’s cultural expectations. They are resorting to increasingly extreme measures to measure up.

In true cognitive disconnect, few see the connection between healthism and the growing evidence of the harm. Few see how our childrens’ lives and futures are being jeopardized. But these researchers do....

Study: More teenage girls using diet pills

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been clinically following 2,500 girls from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds since 1999. The study, Project EAT, just reported their latest findings which were that in just the past five years, the number of teen girls taking diet pills has doubled. One in five girls today are using risky diet pills.

But it gets more frightening. Nearly two out of three teen girls are using drastic and dangerous methods trying to control their weight including pills, laxatives, vomiting, not eating and skipping meals.

The government views 15% of children as being “overweight.”

Meanwhile, 62.7% of teen girls are endangering their lives and health trying to be thin.

Musing: While everyone focuses on an unsound crisis, real issues go unrecognized. Our priorities are really messed up.