10 July 2009
Fat Kids of East London, I Salute You
This delightful news story suggests that some kids are showing prurient obesity researchers exactly where they can shove their stupid surveys. Go kids, go!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
I love that the researchers 'realized' that the kids were tricking them; how do they KNOW they kids just weren't that active?
It's cool - kids are always great at getting out of stuff, ask any teacher! - but I can see some drawbacks.
One, you just know people are going to take it as 'proof' of how lazy fat kids must be. (Note to self: if this story appears in the Daily Mail, do not read comments for sake of blood pressure.) Notice they were surprised at how active the obese kids were, and that's the only reason they investigated them further - how exactly do they know that equally lazy thin kids (and there are plenty of those) weren't using this trick as well?
Two....'after adjustment'? How exactly do they know how much of the action on a pedometer is dog, and if not, can the study still have any validity for those kids? Sounds iffy...
It's true, this story is flawed in many ways. Who knows what kind of Alice In Wonderland mirror of the media it has been reflected through, and how many times that has happened. Still, I love the idea of crafty fat kids, no matter where the truth of this story lies.
I also adore the idea of crafty fat kids! Thanks for sharing this great story...
I found this observation particularly hilarious:-
"But after a week we found there were some kids who were extremely active but still obese," said Professor Maffulli"
Because all a fat kid has to do is walk a bit more and in a week's time all that unsightly flab will have simply melted away!
The research is incredibly flawed but what I found most interesting about the article wasn't the text but the associated picture.
All you see about this person is their size; you don't see their face, their expression or anything else about them. They have no identity other than their size.
Rosa, yes, another dehumanising pic. There's a whole industry based on producing and using them.
Post a Comment