This time, it's the National Eating Disorders Association targeting a campaign against child obesity in Georgia. 

Back in April, it was the website Sociological Images, attacking the same campaign for the same reason, that it shames children. This morning's press release leads off...

I recently came aware of therapist Amy Pershing via a blog post on psychcentral.com in which she was interviewed. I found a lot to agree with in what she said — that binge eating isn’t diet failure but is an eating disorder deserving of treatment, not societal scorn, for example.

But one passage bothered me enough to track her down for a few more questions. Here’s the passage, which came in response to interviewer Margarita Tartakovsky’s question: “What are common challenges that make it tougher to overcome BED or problems with overeating?”

”From a cultural perspective, we begin to teach people to distrust and dishonor their bodies from childhood. We do not, as a society, value size or shape diversity; in fact weigh bias and stigma fundamentally underlies any eating disorder. “Thin” has to be presumed more valued for the symptoms to coalesce. We are taught to distrust our food preferences and our appetites, especially as girls, from early in life. We are taught to “exercise,” but not to play. Children learn their bodies are to be controlled, not honored. So the ability to hear cues, to really feel the positive impact of playing and eating well, typically must be relearned.”

Additionally, weight and being “fat” is so completely vilified now that the idea of body wisdom is more remote than it has even been. We have a “war on obesity.” Literally now people are encouraged to be at odds with their bodies. Then, we are sold a profound “bill of goods” by the diet industry (with a 95% failure rate over 6 months), further removing us from simply listening to our needs. The current system makes recovery a veritable act of defiance. You have to be a renegade just to be in your body.

The JAMA op-ed by Drs. David Ludwig and Lindsey Murtagh in which they raised the issue of moving extremely obese children temporarily into foster care, as an alternative to bariatric surgery, has drawn comment far and wide, including by me.

I was asked twice yesterday for my penny's worth of reaction to this story, about whether extremely obese children should be put in foster care:

First, I want to recommend to you the Lunch Tray blog, written in Houston by Bettina Elias Siegel. She really works it, and is a constant source of information and courant perspective. This morning's case in point (for me; she posted this April 26) is an interview she did with retired Air Force General Norman Seip, a member of Mission Readiness, a bipartisan coalition of 200 retired senior military leaders who bemoan — and more importantly, work to redress —the fact that 75 percent of Americans ages 17-24 are unfit for military service, because they have criminal records, haven't graduated high school, or are physically unfit.

Recent headline on the Center for Consumer Freedom's blog: "News Flash: Parents Can Help Kids Overcome Obesity"

Well, duh — yet another foolish post from the bought-and-paid-for shill of the restaurant and food products industry that is wrong, even when it's right.

Of course parents can help kids overcome obesity! But they lacerate logic with their implication that, therefore, no other steps to address a grave and growing problem are necessary or warranted.

I swear, I was going to comment on this post, anyway, before I got to the point where it mentions my name. No, I swear!

One of the dodges that food-industry lobbyists and apologists use is that those foods are fine when eaten occasionally as part of a balanced food plan. I would dispute even that, because crap food is crap food, regardless of how often it is consumed. But certainly, consuming more of it is worse than consuming less of it.

In the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity's recent f.a.c.t.s. report (which I'm highlighting as a continuing series), "40 percent of parents report that their children ask them to go to McDonald's at least once a week; 15 percent of preschoolers ask to go every day."

These kids today! Where do they get such ideas?

From McDonald's, of course, through its endless marketing efforts, which saturate TV but go far beyond it, to 13 websites, banner ads, and social media.

Sarah Palin has found a new way to channel the Tea Party movement's anti-big-government fervor — and tweak First Lady Michelle Obama at the same time. On Nov. 9, she showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing dozens of cookies, a gesture intended to show her disapproval of a state proposal to limit the sweets served in public schools. "Who should be making the decisions what you eat and school choice and everything else?" Palin asked the students, in a clear swipe at the First Lady's campaign to end childhood obesity.