A massive online debate has been sparked after a social media user asked the question: “Why isn’t childhood obesity considered child abuse?”
In an explosive Reddit thread, users of the social news aggregation site were quick to weigh in on the sensitive argument.
Responses ranged from agreeing childhood obesity was a form of “abuse”, to shooting down the idea, with one person stating, “the law doesn’t require people to be perfect parents”.
This isn’t the first time the childhood obesity-child abuse argument has been talked about.
In Australia, the The Age revealed that Victorian welfare authorities were using “extreme obesity” as a means of removing kids from the care of their parents.
Their investigation refers to two children separated from their parents by the Department of Human Services, citing obesity within each of their child protection cases.
And experts – like Tim Gill, who is the associate professor of Sydney University’s Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating – predict that we are likely to see more and more of the cases crop up.
”We are going to see more children in that [extreme] weight category and in some ways, yes, it’s a failure of parents,” Mr Gill told The Age.
“But it also reflects a failure of society – that we could create a circumstance that would allow and encourage kids to overeat and under-exercise to such an extent that they get to that weight.”
In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health’s Annual Update of Key Results 2014/15: New Zealand Health Survey found that one in nine children aged between 2 and14 years old were obese, and a further 22 per cent of children were overweight.
The Ministry released a Childhood Obesity Plan in July, which aimed that “95 per cent of obese children identified in the Before School Check (B4SC) programme will be offered a referral to a health professional for clinical assessment and family based nutrition, activity and lifestyle interventions” by December 2017.