You're SomeBODY: How to Be a Slim Kid

Donna MacDonald was a nutritionist and founder of the Nutrition Information Service at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto.

Designed for use by parents or professionals (teachers, nurses, nutritionists, etc.) working with overweight children, You’re SomeBODY and the accompanying guidebook SomeBODY’s Companion attempt to alter eating patterns that lead to obesity through the application of standard behavior modification techniques and traditional nutrition/health education methods.

SomeBODY’s Companion, the parent/professional guidebook, provides background information on eating behavior problems, nutrition, goal setting, and achievement, along with answers to puzzles and a set of references.

In You’re SomeBODY the child’s workbook, riddles, jokes, poems, comics, puzzles, and crosswords are used to interest the child in learning about physical activity, nutrition, obesity, calories, and meal planning. Behavioral techniques such as contracting and record keeping are also employed. A board game called “Kilotrack” is part of the package. The workbook also includes a children’s recipe section. While the recipes are nutritious, the authors are naive if they really think that concoctions such as “Liver Carribe,” “Lentils Monastery Style,” or “Russian Braised Carrots” are about to make converts to healthier eating patterns out of anyone. The use of more imaginative names for the recipes would help.

The dichotomy between theory and practice is evident in the philosophical underpinnings of the publication. Traditional nutrition and health education methods are often successful with a minority of highly motivated individuals but fail with the majority of the population. This failure is particularly evident with the problem of obesity. Similarly, behavior modification has not had great success in the weight reduction area. However, professionals continue to employ these methods instead of developing and testing alternatives.

Many of the core reasons for the prevalence of obesity and poor eating patterns are rooted in a social system that promotes excessive consumption as a substitute for human needs. Obesity is a social problem that manifests itself in individuals who are particularly prone to using food as a substitute and/or are genetically predisposed to obesity because of lower than average metabolic rates. Attempting to attack this problem through behavioral change at the level of the individual will never meet with overwhelming success.

Years of health education campaigns to prevent or eliminate smoking based on almost every conceivable method resulted in only a modest success. Not until recently, when smoking has become socially unacceptable, have significant changes in smoking patterns been seen. Consumption of high calorie, low nutrition foods is currently socially acceptable, even glamorous. The least nutritious foods are usually those that are the most heavily advertised and seductively promoted. When people have strong associations between comfort or status and such foods, traditional methods of change are not very effective.

The methods used by the authors are not tested or proven to be effective. The book may be useful in some situations with certain individuals, but it could be argued that setting up a young child to focus on his or her fatness while having to cope with externally produced food desire/denial might produce just as many negative as positive effects. Encouraging a much higher level of physical activity would likely constitute a more productive and positive method of dealing with the problem of an overweight child.