National Day of the Obesity Panic

Today is National Child Day, and UNICEF Canada has released an appropriately-timed report.

And among the many ways we as a country are failing our children (the most vulnerable), they list obesity rates. Canada has too many fat kids, according to UNICEF.

And, you know, when the same report goes on to say that life expectancy is increasing and that infant mortality is decreasing (albeit not as quickly here as elsewhere), I have a hard time being overly concerned about fat kids. And it saddens me that UNICEF Canada felt they had to include obesity rates. Because it's far too easy for people to focus on the fat kid problem and ignore the real problems: the many kids who live in poverty, seven years after we were supposed to have eliminated child poverty (remember that?); the kids in isolated communities or on reserves who don't have access to the resources and the health care that they need; the kids who really need our help.

Childhood obesity -- hell, obesity in general -- is an aesthetic panic. It's not some dire end-of-the-world problem that we need to throw resources at. There are plenty of resources being directed towards making affluent people of all ages skinnier.

How's about we throw some resources at the child poverty thing instead? Or the issue of kids with untreated mental illnesses? How's that for an idea?