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Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens in Weight Crisis (Understanding Weight)
Afraid to Eat Children and Teens in Weight Crisis - Understanding Weight Author:Francie M. Berg, Frances Berg Young people today are growing up with a deep fear of fat. It's a fear that consumes them, shatters lives, and even kills. They live in a culture that tells them their bodies are wrong and promotes destructive values through media, advertising and entertainment industries. "Children and Teens Afraid to Eat: Helping Youth in Today's Weig... more »ht-Obsessed World" offers the nutrition profession's strongest challenge to date to America's obsession with thinness, laying bare its tragic results. In this book Frances M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, extensively documents the harm done in children's lives. Berg says it is a serious health crisis when more than two-thirds of high school girls are dieting, less than half are fully nourished, one-third are smoking, and one-fifth take diet pills, all in their desperate drive to be thinner. Teenage boys mirror these problems to a lesser extent. Now in its third, completely revised and updated edition, this book shines the spotlight even more clearly than before on the six major problems driving this crisis — dysfunctional eating, undernourishment of teen girls, hazardous weight loss, eating disorders, size prejudice and overweight. All are increasing and striking at ever younger ages. In the second half "Children and Teens Afraid to Eat" gives clear guidelines in how to deal with this crisis in health-centered ways. Thus, it offers more than a penetrating analysis of a major public health problem — it is also a how-to book of practical solutions, with action steps that parents, teachers, counselors and health providers can take now to promote health and well-being. The earlier edition, "Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens in Weight Crisis" is being used extensively in schools, health clinics and in-service training programs across the U.S. and Canada. Berg's companion book "Women Afraid to Eat: Breaking Free in Today's Weight- Obsessed World" documents the same problems for women. Both books show how the medical profession's insistence on ideal weight as a national priority has reinforced and validated the obsession with size and shape. But instead of improved health, the efforts to help people manage their weight have backfired, failing at weight loss and contributing to an epidemic of body dissatisfaction. Berg who is editor of Healthy Weight Journal advocates a health at any size approach in which people of all sizes receive consistent messages to "eat well, live actively and feel good about yourself and others," based on the Canadian Vitality program. To normalize eating, parents are urged to first end their own dieting, then teach children regular eating habits and to tune in to hunger and fullness signals. Together the two Afraid to Eat books, both with 21st century copyrights, offer a treasure trove of new information, charts, tips and how-to suggestions. They provide a wealth of research and insight for speakers, writers and students at all levels. Both are highly recommended by health, nutrition and library sources for both consumers and professionals. Excerpts available online at the website.« less