Who doesn't love a pudgy little baby? Those cute cheeks! Roly poly legs and tiny bellies that jiggle when they laugh.
Saturday Night Live made fun of it in this hilarious sketch, but some parent's just aren't into their chubby babies. According to ABC's Goodmorning America, parents are obsessed with weight, are putting their tiny infants on extreme diets in an effort to get them thin and trim. Not teenagers, not tweens, but actual babies who are under a year old.
Time Healthland reveals that 1 in 10 babies under the age of 2 is over weight. This could be a genuine cause for concern, but it says more about the parents and their own struggles with food than it does about their baby's actual size.
Look at this fattie! Somebody get this baby a carrot stick.
Doctor Jatinder Bhatia, chair of the nutrition committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics told ABC, "I have seen parents putting their infant and 1-year-old on diets because of history in one parent or another."
This woman was arrested for starving their 1 year old baby and putting laxatives in her bottle because she thought the baby was too fat. The mother was quoted as saying, "Oh My God, she is fat ... I have a fat baby."
I get it. I struggle with weight myself and I can understand a parent wanting to spare their child the problems that come with a lifetime of eating disorders, but give me a break, babies are supposed to be fat.
Okay, maybe not this fat.
It's no wonder that eating disorders are on the rise with children under 12. My friend's 5 year old came home from preschool one day crying because she had been told by a classmate that she was too fat. 5 year olds shouldn't even be thinking about how fat they are. That's exactly how eating disorders are born.
I think that we need to focus on being healthy and not on people's size. A lot of kids will gain weight before a growth spurt as well. They get a little chubby and then BAM, by the end of summer they're 3 inches taller and they look just fine, but some parents freak out. They think that this is an eating disorder instead of the natural cycle of life.
What do you think about extreme diets for infants? Are we too obsessed with appearance? Would you put a baby on a diet?
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