Well, Now: Can Kids Be Healthy at Any Size?

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3.8 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We live in a weight-obsessed world, and children are not immune. From the moment a child is born, their weight and height are tracked and recorded. Then throughout their development, these metrics are used as one of the main factors to determine their health. But as the Health at Every Size (HAES) philosophy continues to gain traction for some adults, is there use for it as a part of growing children’s well-being, too? On this week’s episode of Well, Now Maya and Kavita speak with pediatric dietitian Jill Castle and her approach to children’s health, which marries the traditional medical approach with a body-postive, HAES model. Her latest book is Kids Thrive At Every Size: How to Nourish Your Big, Small, or In-Between Child for a Lifetime of Health and Happiness. If you liked this episode, check out: Eating for Health Well, Now is hosted by registered dietitian nutritionist Maya Feller and Dr. Kavita Patel. Podcast production by Vic Whitley-Berry with editorial oversight by Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to wellnow@slate.com Want to listen to Well, Now uninterrupted? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock ad-free listening to Well, Now and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/wellplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Well Now Slate's podcast on health and wellness.
0:09.0	I'm Kavita Patel.
0:10.5	And I'm Maya Feller.
0:12.0	We live in a weight-obsessed world and children are not in you.
0:16.0	In fact, they're held to the same moral hierarchy as adults when it comes to weight and body size and composition.
0:22.7	So I'll use my daughter as an example.
0:25.4	Until the age of seven, she consistently plotted along the lower end of the growth chart, around the 13th percentile.
0:32.8	People who didn't know us would always comment on how cute and small she was and what a pretty girl she was
0:39.1	and with a great metabolism she had. Someone even went so far as to say, wow, she must be able to eat
0:45.8	everything. Now, mind you, all of this is unsolicited comments from strangers. Society decided that
0:53.3	she had a desirable body and found it socially
0:56.3	acceptable to praise her for something that was completely outside of her control. Meanwhile,
1:02.9	she was totally self-conscious about her small size. Kavita, I know that you primarily work with
1:09.8	adults. What's been your experience with the pediatric
1:12.7	population regarding body weight composition and health? Yeah, you're right, Maya. I only work with
1:19.1	adults, but now more than ever, I am inheriting adults who have already had a pretty significant
1:25.9	metabolic workup prior to being officially an adult,
1:30.6	meaning prior to the age of 18, they are starting to get cholesterol.
1:35.0	They're tracking their diabetes or pre-diabetes metrics, monitoring their sugars.
1:40.5	These are not type 1 diabetics.
1:42.1	We're struggling to kind of give people a label of type 2
1:46.4	diabetes, even though they might qualify, just because it does, unfortunately, from the moment
	...

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