Harvard University Professor Dr. David Ludwig is under attack for his public call this week for some obese children to be taken from their parents to protect their health. Ludwig stated that “[i]n severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.” That legal standpoint may need a bit more work.
Ludwig is an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His comments came in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
First, in defense of Ludwig, he prefaced his statement by saying that such intervention would only be in severe cases. It is indeed possible for a child to be removed in a severe case where the child is in imminent risk of seriously injury or death due to either acts or omissions by the parents.
However, the statement rightfully raised concerns. There is growing evidence of genetic predispositions for obesity in some people. The parents may not be at fault in the continuing condition. Moreover, removing the child from the home will only increase stress for the child.
Parental rights are protected by the Constitution and, while child services are given a fair degree of discretion in the removal of children from homes to protect them, those decisions are subject to a full legal process. Most such removals are likely to fail under current legal standards absent a showing of imminent harm and a failure of the parents to follow medical advice. As a comparison, courts often express reluctance to order cancer treatments or medical interventions for a child when parents claim religious objections to treatment. The child is often at immediate risk when a court issues an order of removal or arrest.
The problem is that obesity is very common (unfortunately) among children today and they are all at some level of risk. An estimated 12.5 million children and teens (17% of that population) are obese.
Ludwig would need a case where the child is in immediate risk of heart failure of some of medical emergency. Such a status usually required hospitalization, not foster care. Moreover, experts in the article below question whether care would improve in foster care.
This was the case of 3-year-old Anamarie Regino who weighed 90 pounds and was removed from the home for two months. She did not show any improvement in foster care. She is now 14 years old and was raised by her parents.
Source: ABC News
That sounds great, Gene.
Smom,
I’m a big fan of homemade lime or lemonade lightly sweetened with a simple cane sugar syrup infused with fresh mint that I make myself. The syrup is also good for sweetening tea. It gives me total control of the sugars and tastes awesome in lemonade (the mint really makes the lemon mellow).
kd, and how do you know that Big Ag is not paying Google for top billing to discredit real scientific research?
shano I drink pellegrino every evening sometimes with a little juice mixed in.
And now they are hiding HFCS in labels under different names , using modified corn starch, maltodexidrine, etc. There are dozens of frauds like this in corporate foodstuffs. All the same crap.
Yeah, but Bijou Boy….is it still a toss up between mud bugs and spaghetto’s today? or are they both off the digestion track…..
A sparkling mineral water mixed with citrus and a bit of fruit juice makes a nice soda substitute.
GeneH this might be the first thing I’ve agreed with you on: spaghettios are disgusting.
The first aspartame study was a correlation study which doesn’t prove anything except maybe further control study research in this area might be fruitful.
The second study was conducted on diabetes prone rodents. The insulin level increases were not statistically significant in any event, hence the “suggests” language.
Elaine,
That is very true. This is purely anecdotal, but one time when I was in college, I recalled how much I enjoyed Spaghettio’s as a kid so on a lark a bought a can at the grocery store one day. They were the sweetest, most disgusting thing I had the displeasure to taste as an adult. Learning to cook as a teen and a young adult had refined my tastes which not only made my sense of taste more discrete, it had re-tuned it to note imbalanced flavors as well. Imbalanced sickly sweet was the dominate taste I got from that can.
Swarthmore mom,
I find that artificial sweeteners have a strange after-taste. I cut soft drinks out of my diet years ago. They’re just empty calories.
I mean Rumsfeld.
shano Rumsfield was at Searle when he did that.
Google is your friend, GeneH.
AY,
Read the labels on lots of packaged foods and you may find two/three/four different kinds of sugars as major ingredients–even in some foods that don’t taste sweet
kderosa,
It would help if you didn’t rely upon reports paid for by those with financial stakes in the propagation of GMO crops. If you have problems with the study methodology of the Italian National Institute of Research on Food and Nutrition and the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna as commissioned by Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, take it up with them. I read nothing that indicated that any of those groups refused to allow their research to be peer reviewed. If you have proof of that likely specious claim, please provide it.
I am addicted to the diet soda but I don’t gain weight on it. I eat healthy food that is mainly organic otherwise.
Artificial sweeteners are all neuro toxins. Especially if they have been heated in the can, at a loading dock for instance.
This is just one more chemical load that US corporate interests are making tons of profits off of at the cost of the health of Americans.
Aspertaime (sp?) has never gone through any controlled studies that prove it is safe for humans to consume. Donald Rumsfeld got it fast tracked over strong objections from the scientific community.
Actually Elaine…
If you’ll read the ingredients on the label…You will see that sodium is like either the 3rd or 4th on the label….not only IMO the artificial stuff bad for you…but the sodium….keeps you just a little bit thirsty….so you want more….a few years ago I pretty much gave up sugars in drinks of any kind…I do sometime do have my Dr Pepper though….
Sugar May Be Bad But This Sweetener Is Far More Deadly
Dr. Joseph Mercola, Physician and Author
Huffington Post
2/17/2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/sugar-may-be-bad-but-this_b_463655.html
Excerpt:
Study after study are taking their place in a growing lineup of scientific research demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it’s myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.
And fructose in any form — including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose — is the worst of the worst!
Fructose is a major contributor to:
• Insulin resistance and obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL
• Depletion of vitamins and minerals
• Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout
A Calorie is Not a Calorie
Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium — and in fact, every living thing on the Earth–uses glucose for energy.
If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day — a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.
It isn’t that fructose itself is bad — it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.
There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:
1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.
Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.