I stumbled across an article yesterday that asked "Are we feeding a fear of fat?"

All I can say is: damn skippy we are.

Far more than freaky thin models (which most people can see as unrealistic, even if they want to look that way), the hysteria over obesity and fat is triggering eating disorders. And the really scary part is that so few people can really see it.

"What's wrong with encouraging a healthy diet and exercise?" people might ask. Well, nothing in particular, but it's the type of diet and exercise that's being encouraged, along with the premise that there's no such thing as too few calories and too much exercise and too many pounds lost.

Kids are being caught in the crossfire, internalizing these messages of fat=bad and thin=good, of dieting=morality and overweight=sinful, of exercise and lettuce being virtuous and relaxation being slothful. Nowhere in these messages are the dangers of malnutrition, the problems of the female athlete triad. Many anti-obesity activists seem quite willing to tolerate a few triggered eating disorders in the name of obliterating fat from the landscape. It's tragic, they say, but obesity is such a pressing problem that it's a necessary evil.

From the Times Online article:

At a recent conference of the British Dietetic Association, Claire Mellors, a dietitian in childhood and adolescent eating disorders for the Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust, described how “a real fear of obesity is an emerging and worrying trend” that is causing a dramatic rise in the number of children with eating disorders. “From my clinical experience I would say that as healthy living messages have become more prevalent, there has been a corresponding rise in referrals for children with disordered eating,” Mellors says. “We have no hard facts to back this up yet, but it is clearly happening.”

It is difficult to escape the bombardment of public campaigns that encourage children to lead more active lifestyles. From schools to supermarkets and from cereal packets to chocolate wrappers, the overwhelming message is that being fat is bad - very bad - while being thin is all things admirable and good. At the checkout in Sainsbury's you are handed vouchers for its Active Kids campaign, designed to combat obesity, and the chain also has teams of food advisers to deliver dietary advice in schools...

...But, for all their good intentions, these and other campaigns have become so pervasive in society that they have prompted a worrying shift in perspective about weight and exercise. Whereas it was once an integral part of daily life for children, physical activity is now billed as a means to an end, that end being slimness and a low BMI. To anyone who grew up in the 1970s or 1980s, compartmentalising exercise into periodic bouts of sweaty effort is something alien. Back then, being fit, even being fat, was not a concept that readily entered the conscience of a child of school age.

Like I said, the scariest part of this hysteria is how rational it seems- to people with eating disorders and the people who love them. Being obsessed with food and weight is normal, so spotting an eating disorder can be difficult. Where do you draw the line?

And what is the next generation going to be like?