Oh Dr Shirley Alexander

How I hate thee!

Just a week after making the outrageous claim that fat children should be taken away from their parents, Dr Alexander has popped up in the media again.

Now credit where credit’s due, this could well be the fault of the media outlets and their runaway obsession with TEH OBESITEEE EPIDEMIC!!!11!!1eleventy!, but nevertheless, I’m disgusted.

Now obesity epidemic hits babies! say the headlines. Children as young as one are being diagnosed as obese. For a start – diagnosed by who? Let’s not forget gorgeous little Olivia, who was labelled obese by the staff at her childcare centre.

Plus, the article says that the child weight management clinic at which Dr Alexander works has 150 children aged 1-16 on its books. Exactly how many of those are one year old? I’m going to guess that it’s only little Olivia who was enrolled by her obsessed carers, and promptly removed by her mother! Not really, but you get my point. There could be a single one-year-old and 149 16-year-olds in those statistics, so it’s meaningless to panic about all the obese babies, when there might not even be any!

Dr Alexander is quoted in the article as saying:

adolescent girls are also having menstrual problems because they are developing polycystic ovary syndrome

Now stop me if I’m wrong, but obesity is actually a SYMPTOM of PCOS in some women, so to suggest that young women are developing PCOS because they are fat (therefore making it their fault) is totally ludicrous, and so very far from being constructive. Granted, being overweight can in some cases make the symptoms of PCOS worse (catch-22 anyone?), but that doesn’t mean that being skinny means you no longer have PCOS. Just ask my skinny little sister!

Also, in an interview with the ABC, Dr Shirley Alexander said:

we are saying it is important to look at some of the other, more, later chronic effects. Some of these children in other countries or, you know, have been known to actually die because of their obesity and the complications of their obesity.

Ok, ignoring the fact that it’s very hard to believe anyone who seems to struggle so with grammar – where are these children who have died from obesity? In other countries you say? Which complications exactly? So you’ve never actually seen it happen yourself. Can you point us to an actual real life example please? This reminds me of being in school, age 9, and complaining to my mother about “why can’t I do XYZ, other girls get to do it!”. The difference is, my mother didn’t believe me! Show me the actual scientific proof and I might start believing you, and show me where they’ve found a proven way to lose weight and maintain that loss. Then we can talk.

Now I’m running out of rant-juice and I need to go get some actual money-earning work done.

In the mean time, Junkfood Science has a wonderful in-depth article about this, which covers a lot more of the bases than I have, so check it out for a much more scientific view of why this is all a big pile of donkey crap!