Call to Action: Scholastic's Fat Hate Campaign

I'm going to have to take some time to calm down before offering suggestions.This is horrifing.Fat kids dropping out of school or killing themselves isn't enough?I saw that Kaiser Permanente worked on this. They give substandard care, and I know one woman who they put in a weight loss program as a substitute for fixing what was actually wrong.Aaaarrrrrgggg.

Fatfairy is right... I know I've told so already, but each time I read this kind of bigoted drivel I'm more and more glad that I decided not to have children. With my genes at work, any child I had would undoubtedly be fat, and I don't even want to think about a child - or any human being for that matter - exposed to this kind of crap.
Cameras in the home, catch the culprit in the act. I think I'm going to be sick.

May I suggest three additional actions that will hit Scholastic where it really hurts -- its revenue and stock price:

1. Contact your local school board and ask that they remove Scholastic as a provider of text books in the district. Almost every text book out there has alternatives from other publishers. Encourage your schools to use them. And DISCOURAGE your school system from ordering this product.

2. Boycott Scholastic's products at your local bookstore, encourage others to do the same and make sure that store management knows why you're not buying the books.

3. Tell anyone you know who owns Scholastic stock to sell it. With the end of the Harry Potter phenomenon, they're hurting to begin with;

One of the things that should certainly be covered in any letters is this very recently released study about the impact that negative reinforcement has on fat kids. I think there was another earlier this year. Kids aren't fat because they are stupid, and reinforcing that idea has absolutely no effect of weight.

And BabySeal, we are in complete agreement that this just reinforces my decision to remain happily childfree.

That game? Completely repulsive. I can't believe how degrading and full of S*&T it is.

*fumes*

Wow. I'm new to Size acceptance, but more and more I'm finding I've made the right choice.

If anyone isn't feeling up to writing their own letter, please feel free to adapt mine. I'm going to post it at Kell's site as well.

Dear Sir or Madam:

As a [PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION], I am writing to express my outrage at Scholastic’s decision to partner with Kaiser Permanente to offer the blatantly hate-mongering and discriminatory “Food Detective” video game.

Are you aware of the content of this game? Truly aware? I cannot believe that the Scholastic Company that I know and love could be a part of distributing the out-and-out lies and bigotry contained in this game. Here’s a sample, which I have borrowed from nutrition researcher Sandy Szwarc:

“The Food Detective game invites kids to click on the ‘AFD Case Files’ of various ‘Suspects:’ children who are supposedly behaving badly. The fat little 10-year old girl is Emily. The game tells kids that Emily is fat because ‘she eats too much and needs to learn portion control.’ The food detective sets up a security cam in her house ‘to catch the culprit in the act’ and she is shown gobbling nonstop a table of fattening foods and a chart shows her eating a whopping 4,550 [kilo]calories.”

Research from as far back as the 1950s has debunked the notion that fat children eat in this manner. Even an adult would have difficult eating that many calories in one sitting, let alone a 10-year-old girl. The plain fact is that there is no scientific consensus about what causes children—or adults—to become fat. While eating and exercise habits can play a role, research is increasingly showing that the human body is a mysterious, adaptable thing that fights to keep a person’s weight within a range proper for him or her.

Sandy Szwarc again: The DONALD (Dortmund Nutritional Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed) Study, for example, clinically followed children, actually weighing the individual children and recording their diets (the foods, amounts and eating occasions) at least ten times a year and followed them thusly for 17 years. They found that no matter what the children ate during childhood or adolescence, they naturally grew up to be a wide range of weights. While there were great differences in the children’s diets, these differences weren’t at all related to their weights.

New York Times reporter Gina Kolata made this case very strongly in her bestselling and well-researched book Rethinking Thin, and subsequent reporting from the Times and elsewhere has supported the notion that weight, like height, is largely a function of genetics.

Writing in a 2005 issue of the journal Pediatrics, the U.S. Preventative Services Task force, after reviewing 40 years worth of evidence, admitted, “What we don’t know overwhelms what we do know about prevention of the adverse outcomes associated with childhood obesity and overweight.”

One of the few absolutes that has emerged in recent research is that the stigma and bullying suffered by children who are considered fat results in higher levels of depression and even suicide. This is disregarding the large and growing numbers of even normal-weight children, especially girls, who are at an increased risk of developing eating disorders because of the fear of becoming fat. More than half of women aged 18 to 25 have told researchers that they would rather be hit by a truck or lose a limb than be fat.

And this game does not just promote wrong-headed ideas about fat children. A small child, Cole, is presented as a “weakling” and a problem case because he eats junk food. Is there only one allowable body type among children? What does this tell our kids about their classmates who are smaller or larger than they are? And what about handicapped or otherwise challenged children—will that also be presented as “their fault”?

I would like you to take a minute to imagine various children sitting down in front of this “game.” Imagine a child prone to bullying getting new ammunition to use against his fat, skinny, or otherwise “different” classmates. Imagine the class’s prettiest girl sitting down and internalizing the message that food will make her fat. Maybe she will trade away her lunch today instead of eating. Imagine a fat boy sitting down and seeing himself portrayed as a “couch loafer” and glutton—even though he loves to play with his classmates and enjoys his after-school program in martial arts.

There are ways to teach children about eating good food and loving movement. This is not one of them. Shame is never going to succeed. If you as a company truly care about the children to whom you sells books and other educational products, you will take a long, hard look at this video game and cease your involvement in it. Until that day comes, I will not buy another Scholastic product, and I will urge the [LOCAL SCHOOL NAMES] to sever their relationship with you.

Please consider what you are doing.

By the way, there was a case a few years ago where a teenager who was very fat died and her mother was accused of child abuse (Christine Corrigan?). Kaiser Permanente was the girl's health care provider, and the mother had taken the girl to their doctors multiple times because she was worried about the girl's weight gain, and appearently the doctors did not take her concern seriously or try to find out whether the girl had any medical problems, These are the "medical" people who helped Scolastic.

My first thought was...what the F**K! I can't believe this type of crap is going on. Why not hand all the "skinny" kids rocks and let them throw them at all the fat kid while taunting them. I am so sick of this crap. It's going beyond ridiculous. It getting to the point of dangerous. Why are fat people allowed to be targets? They can't target people based on their race or religion, but if they have too many pounds on them above their BMI it's okay to be verbally and mentally abusive? ARRRRGGGGHHHHH! >:-(

Why not hand all the "skinny" kids rocks and let them throw them at all the fat kid while taunting them?

Indeed. Exploiting children's inherent fear of difference and promoting inaccurate stereotypes seems to a major factor in much of the 'anti-obesity' policy currently finding its way into schools. I'm sure that some of these organisations won't be satisfied until suicide attempts amongst bullied fat children reach epidemic proportions.

This game is thoroughly revolting, and not just in its judgmental attitude toward fat people. It would be interesting to know if the US has any high-profile anti-bullying organisations (along the lines of Childline, Kidscape or Bullying UK in the UK) and what their views on this 'game' would be were it brought to their attention by members of the fat acceptance community.

It could also be worth approaching teachers' organisations or unions in the states concerned - again if you have such a thing - since there is growing unease amongst some more level-headed teaching professionals over here about the increasingly bizarre methods being employed in schools under the guise of 'tackling obesity'. In particular Chris Keates of the NASUWT pointed out the risks of the spotlight approach over a year ago.

I would suggest that any correspondence needs to point out how the game leads one to assume, by their portrayal, that two of the "suspects" in the game are fat, because nowhere is that word mentioned or written about for any of the "suspects" in the game. So it's important to point out that while they were very careful in the wording and language used in the game, specifically to avoid such complaints, the societal assumptions (unspoken, common knowldge, etc) is what they're relying on to get their point across.

Emily is described as "Emily eats good food but eats too much" "Emily has a good diet but eats too much. She needs to learn portion control." MIchael, is also not referred to as "fat" or a "couch potoato" or any such phrase. What it says' about Michael is "Michael doesn't exercise enough." Michael nees to get more play in his day. His activity level is way low."

Now, there is a photo of Michael sitting, looking very tired, on a couch. Does that imply he's fat? Lazy? A "couch potato"? The game doesn't say or show anything but a small photo. But it's the "common" assumptions of behavior that one assumes go wtih that photo, which is what gets their message across. One other "case" is Mathew "who needs to build endurance and get healthier". It shows him in last place in a 100yd dash. Then after "exercising" he wins the race. (Which is a whole other problem I"ll mention in a bit.). But again the game relies on the assumption--- who's the kid nobody wants on their team?--the fat kid and the weakling.

Although I do have to say I actually don't see it such a stretch for a child to eat around 4,0000 calories, but one assumes the parents are only going to allow that on occasion. Lets say a kid had two bowls of kid cerial (almost a 1000 cal right there), then McDs for lunch-- cheesburger, sm fry, kid cone, kid coke... (another 700) and then a snack or two, plus dinner and, theres the 4000. Obviously no kid's going to eat like that all the time! But the senario the game put forth is that this little girl Emily does. (Apparently none of the children have parents that feed them, they all seem to be left to fend for themselves at mealtimes..)

I would also point out the other flaws in the game.....

The food recommendations seem to come from the Meat and Dairy associations. They make one "case" about getting lots of calcium from dairy products. However, they neglected to teach that without the proper amount of vitamin D and magnesium, the body won't absort the calcuim and only absorbs 500mg at a time anyway. So they got a F for that lesson from my perspective. Also, I wasn't sure about the generic-ethnicity of some of the "suspects". Katherine, who needed more protein and was told to eats lots of meat, seemed Asian to me. Now, usually an Asian diet is rich with fish, vegetables and rice. So it hardly seemed likely that she woudl be low on protein. And I noticed all the exercise touted was pushing sports. Even the game itself shouts at you after 60minutes to go and do 100 pushups and locs you out for an hour! So Dance, Theatre, Art, heck even rollerblading, or skateboarding, were not considered worthy activities for the kids to engage in! Although I did not look at the print-out activities recommended at the end of each case, nor did I look into the teacher "guides". Oh, and I found it sexist. For the most part, the girls need to eat less, have more protein and play more. The boys need endurance, health, high activity levels and to be in first place in sports.

Well, that's all I could gather in the 60minutes I spent browsing though, before I was shouted at to go do 100 pushups by the game. That's soo freakin obnoxious!

I went through the teachers' guide, it recomends as a healthy habbit, limiting "screen time, inluding homework" to under 2 hours. That could be murder on the, umm, slower kids. My brother's dyslexic, and I remember homework taking hours for him in elementery school. Also, are we counting all the sitting still involved in homework as part of this? Because, usually you'd have homework from at least 2-4 subjects in elementery school. It's been a long time since I was in elementery school, but here's a hypothetical night's worth of homework, read a short story and answer questions: 20 minutes, go over the vocabulary for the spelling test, 10 minutes, 20 math questions, 20 minutes (lets say we're up to doing long devision) which would be nearly an hour. And if we there was a report due, that would have been an easy two hours to get it done (one hour on research one hour writing/proofreading.) That recomendation seems like it's pushing "active" time as more important that getting your homework done to me. Also taking time out of class to do stretches and jumping jacks? Yet again, seems like it's taking away from possible learning time.

As for the game itself, it also seems aimed at not letting kids think at all, one of the "puzzles" is solved just by repeat clicking on a machine, and most of the others you can just guess your way to the end of, without thinking at all, or they give you the answers, for protein girl, the puzzle is to put protien rich food on various plates of low protein food, there are three plates and three obvious choices (peanut butter on bread, meat sauce on speghetti, and chicken with veggies) in the room, just match them up, then rewarded with a "good job!" at the end. I'm actually more offended by the encoragment of stupidity, than the digs at fat kids. There is no way to loose the game. How are you going to learn anything from a game that spoon feeds you the answers? It seems to promote America's stupidity epidemic, from stereotyping the kids, to not needing to think at all to win. And all of this from the company that supplied me with the books that read instead of playing sports as a kid...

Diane is correct that the materials do not indentify any child as "overweight", fat, etc.--but if you look at the pictures of the eight children, some are obviously thin while others are fuller-faced and fuller-bodies (at least what one can see of their bodies). Even at the elementary school age, children will identify the fuller faced/bodied children as fat, particularly since it is those children, like Emily, who are indentified by the "Food Detective" as engaged in behavior associated societally with fat people--she eats too much albeit healthy food. On the other hand, on of the thin girls is identified by the FD as skipping breakfast. I don't think it is a coincidence that one of the fuller-bodied children was not chosen for this food crime. One of the fuller-bodied boys is identified as the couch potato who doesn't exercise while one of the thin boys is described as "weak" (from lack of nourshment?) Again I think it is not coincidental that the fuller-bodied boy is not chosen to be physically weak and the thin boy is not selected for watching too much television. There will be many educators who pooh-pooh these embedded stereotypes and unfortunately reinforce negative stereotypes about fat kids.

Diane's criticisms re: dietary advice contained in the game sound bang on. For example, a lack of protein is never going to be a problem in any child's diet unless he/she is actually living on the street with nothing at all to eat (the standard american diet contains such huge amounts of protein that organ degeneration is almost universal). And they're telling kids to eat meat and dairy products? Um, hello, ethnic and religious insensitivity?