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This January saw the publication of a set of medical guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, intended to tackle the pervasive problem of American kids being so fucking fat all the time. The advice ranges from unconventional measures like counselling, to drastic measures like surgical intervention. It paints a picture of desperation in the struggle to get kids to stop shovelling full packets of Double Stuffed Oreos down their gullets.

Naturally, the flabby jowls of Twitter’s fat acceptance scene are quivering with rage at the suggestion that kids shouldn’t be fat. They are literally shaking, and it’s not just because their blood sugar is spiking. They consider it an affront, and sheer audacity, that anyone should dare to suggest that being morbidly obese is not the healthiest state of being for children. They consider it ‘anti-fat bias’ for fat children to be singled out in the literature. They want the guidance to encourage all children to lose the same amount of weight, which presumably is none at all.

That the problem is so widespread and prevalent makes it clear that these are not isolated incidents of big bones or underactive thyroids. This is the inevitable conclusion of sustained poor diets and poorer parenting. There is only so much good that the proposed guidelines can do. An ounce of lightly steamed prevention is worth a pound of lard fried cure, but cure will suffice, if it works. As much as they are scrabbling to find something – anything – that works, the alternative that is presented by our jolly fat acceptance chums is bleak and unsettling. What we’ve been doing so far has not been working, they say, so we should stop trying altogether. Let’s all resign our children to early graves, so that they don’t have to hold themselves accountable and face up to their own shortcomings.

Being fat is one thing, being obstinately committed to remaining that way is another thing, and using children as pawns in your politicised indolence is indefensible.

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