the war on fat children

If you haven't come across it, I highly recommend Sandy Swarcz's smart as hell blog, Junkfood Science. She publishes assesssments of health science reporting, often exposing places where the reading public is being grossly misled. Particularly illuminating is a recent post showing some of the problems with reports on the healthy eating initiatives being deployed in public schools -- best she can tell, they're not lowering obesity (childhood obesity being a sort of troubling concept anyway, as children's weights fluctuate as they grow and the childhood obesity epidemic corresponding with the children who've had the best health and longest life expectancy of any children in history), and may actually be leading to some behaviors that are actually unhealthy (eating fewer fruits and vegetables in general, and undereating for girls).