Dear parents, please stop rewarding your kids with food!
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As a former obese child who still has real mental and physical issues with nutrition, I cannot walk past a kid holding an ice-cream or a McDonald’s wrapper without feeling a sense of burning rage.
Body image. It’s something that on some level, we all have trouble with, whether it has to do with being too thin, too tall, too ugly or too fat. Especially nowadays when all you have to do is open one of the myriads of social media apps to see perfect body after perfect body zooming past your screen and make you want to just jump into a hole and hide in there for the rest of your days…
According to a research by breakbingeeating.com, over 50 percent of all adults in the UK, the US, Australia, Germany and France experience social stigma because of their weight.
Now that’s a lot of people!
It all begins from early on
As someone who struggles with their own personal body image ever since a young age, I only have to say one thing: dear parents, stop teaching your kids that food is a reward for a good action!
From early on in our lives, we are bombarded with advertisement after advertisement of snacks, junk food, unhealthy drinks, all sugar-coated (literally!) with happy-looking animal mascots, pretty colours or with the promise of some prize to come along with our “yummy food”.
As a child, it’s almost impossible to understand that these are all harmful substances and that our youthful naivety is being exploited by the greedy corporations who are seeking to turn as many children as possible out there into obese adults, powerless to resist the flavour of their addictive substances.
At this early point in our lives, it is our parents who need to fulfil the task of protecting us from going down that path by teaching us what is truly good for our health and what is simply “dressed” as good, only to take advantage of us in the long run and have us going back and emptying our wallets for more.
The results of neglectful parenthood
