The founder of Britain’s top weight loss organization has called a book about the story of a short overweight girl who diets and becomes the school soccer star “an outrage”.
The book, Maggie Goes on a Diet, written and self-published by Paul Kramer, is aimed at pre-teens with ‘Maggie’, the character, portrayed as a chubby, round jumper-wearing cartoon figure with orange pigtails holding up a tiny pink dress and looking wistfully at a skinny version of herself in the mirror. The book has just been unveiled on Amazon and is soon to be made available from other booksellers.
Alison Wetton, CEO of All About Weight, labels the book as a:
“Dangerous weapon promoting the message of body dissatisfaction among a highly vulnerable age group.
This is the wrong way to spread the message despite acknowledging children’s needs for more encouragement to be active and eat healthily. In her view it would simply encourage youngsters to concentrate on their body image, which is linked to a variety of appalling consequences like depression, eating disorders and bullying.”
Her weight loss organization does not cater for children because Wetton believes that prescribed diets for youngsters have a negative psychological effect, labeling the children as “fat”. She says, “The way we help with childhood obesity is by changing adults’ attitudes to eating, and hope parents will adapt and extend the healthy eating habits they learn on their All About Weight plan to the whole family.”
Alison added that consultants/mentors in her weight loss organization also encourage members to exercise as much as possible according to their ability; another benefit they could pass on to their children.
She concluded by saying:
“Losing weight is as much a process of education as it is a matter of will-power. Prevention is better than cure, and if we bring our children up with a healthy attitude to food and exercise, and teach them why it is the best way to live, we won’t have any Maggies looking sadly at themselves in the mirror!”
Written by Petra Rattue