Munchausen By Twinkies

Today there are parallel stories as it relates to our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with food. As our food looks less and less like plants and animals (as it should) our waistlines continue to expand, and Britain’s fattest lady died recently at the tender age of 40.

Sharon Mevsimler was a 45 stone mother. 45 stones is approximately 600 pounds. At 5 feet tall, she was almost five times my weight (I am 5’6″). Are you capable of carrying your own weight? Twice your weight? Three times? What’s the limit before your body gives out? For Mevsimler it was 45 stones.

Also today a woman was bumped from her Southwest flight. She was not obese, she was petite, but the obese FOURTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD next to her required two seats.

When do we say, “The fat acceptance movement has it wrong.”? When do we say that our children are worth fighting for? When do we treat this as a clinical problem instead of an issue of looking cute?

When a 14 year old child cannot fit in an airplane seat it is not time to make the seats larger. It’s time to say, “You’re fat and you need help”. When a 40 year old mother dies, and her friends and family sneak fried food into the hospital room so that she can kill herself in a bucket of chicken, it’s time for the world to take a stand.

I’m not worried about a nation of anorexics. A third of our children are fat. You can call it overweight, you can call it obesity, you can call it adipose tissue. Three in every ten kids is fat and this prevents them from playing, and maturing at the appropriate time. Our children will live shorter lives than you and I, and I promise you it’s the food and the hovering.

I beg you, please turn off the computer and kick your kids out of the house. Hand them a ball or a bucket of chalk and don’t let them inside.

And then, when they come back in the house, let them drink water and eat only foods that they can pronounce.

Moms, your kids are going to die. It’s not baby fat. It’s Munchausen By Twinkies.