Georgia Anti-Obesity Ads Say "Stop Sugarcoating" Childhood Obesity

A chubby, young girl stands with her arms crossed facing the camera. "WARNING: It's hard to be a little girl if you're not," reads the stark copy below her photograph. This striking message is just one of a series of anti-obesity advertisements dubbed "Stop Sugarcoating," released by the Strong4Life campaign and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

ABC News reported that the health organization produced these ads after surveying parents in two Georgia towns. They discovered that 75 percent of parents with obese children were not aware that their children were overweight, while 50 percent of parents didn’t realize that childhood obesity was a problem to begin with. And in a state where nearly 40 percent of children are overweight or obese -- Georgia is in 2nd place for childhood obesity rates nationwide, only behind Mississippi -- these statistics are problematic.

The advertisements, which include both print ads and TV spots, show actual overweight Georgia children and include taglines such as "Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid" and "My fat may be funny to you, but it’s killing me." (Scroll down to see the ads in full.)

Linda Matzigkeit, a senior vice president at Children's Healthcare, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the campaign’s harsh tone was a necessity:

We felt like we needed a very arresting, abrupt campaign that said: "Hey, Georgia! Wake up. This is a problem."

The organization also made a point to specifically target parents. One TV spot shows a child looking miserable and asking his mother "Mom, why am I fat?" His equally overweight mother sighs and looks ashamed.

The ads are meant to draw attention to the childhood obesity epidemic. However, they’ve drawn mixed reactions from both parents and health experts, who have called their effectiveness into question. Many say that the campaign will more likely increase stigmatization against overweight children and make them feel ashamed of their bodies, rather than encouraging healthy habits.

As Dr. Miriam Labbok, director for the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told ABC News:

Blaming the victim rarely helps. These children know they are fat and that they are ostracized already.

And while similarly straightforward campaigns have worked to reduce smoking and meth use, childhood obesity prevention researcher Marsha Davis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that similar tactics have rarely proven effective when it comes to weight. "We need to fight obesity, not obese people," she said.

Quick Poll

Do you think that these ads will be effective or harmful?

Effective. Sometimes the harsh approach is the necessary one.

Harmful. Shaming kids isn't the way to go.

VOTE

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

Comments

[MetalMikala]

02:50 PM on 04/30/2012

Hmmmm. Well I say that there isn't anything wrong with being big, but if parents are oblivious to the contents of what they are feeding their children, then it should be the parents in these commercials admitting to the world that THEY are negligent parents. These children are growing up with examples set before them. Wake up parents!

[rjwhiggins]

12:13 PM on 04/10/2012

Humiliating and taking advantage of these children is not the way to go. What were their parents thinking?

[J Owen Williams]

01:57 AM on 02/19/2012

75 percent of Georgia parents with obese children didn't think their kids were overweight...
How stupid can you be?

[ggmmolly01]

07:35 AM on 02/13/2012

The recent campaigns to stop Obesity, although not very palateable if you are overweight, are spelling it out correctly though........... It's all about health, not looks. That said........People who feel good about how they look are generally healthier both physically and mentally. Hopefully, funds and support generated will also spur medical science to find safer and more effective ways to help those trapped into obesity because of medical reasons. For most people it is a lifestyle though and a very dangerous one, at that. Parent's who promote obesity in their children, should be held accountable. You can get your child into a healthy lifestyle and still build their self esteem. We; as a people; seem to be so afraid of tough love, but health problems and death caused by obesity is hardly anything to be passive about.

[New Yorker919]

11:04 AM on 02/10/2012

I've seen a few articles written by "experts" IN Georgia that said that the anti-smoking ads could seriously! OMG! backfire, so they should probably be stopped. They don't grow tobacco in Georgia do they?

[New Yorker919]

10:58 AM on 02/10/2012

I think it's kind of strange that kids in Georgia only have to take 1/2 of a credit of Physical Education and 1/2 of a credit of personal wellness for ALL 4 YEARS of high school. That is only one semester each. That says, physcial education is not that important and then the ads say, "Hey, don't be fat, you're embarrassing our state and costing us money and you SHOULD be ashamed of yourself."

[Rebecca Jane Weinstein]

09:25 PM on 01/29/2012

I was a chubby kid and put on my first diet at six years old. There was only "healthy" food in my house. I was under a very fancy pediatrician's care. I was taught about nutrition and exercise. I was also taught that I was different, different was bad, and that my normal self was flawed. The result has been a lifelong struggle with eating disorders, dieting then weight gain, residual emotional and physical issues, and a body much larger than it probably would have been had I just been allowed to grow into my natural genetic state. Ask anyone who was taught to diet at a young age what the consequences are -- and consider if you would like those consequences for your child. Every parent has a choice. You can argue against me in principal, but my life experiences are fact. I worked harder at trying to make my body small than anything else, and I have many accomplishment. That is not one of them. And it is the single thing I have been working at the longest. Your child, you decide. Your child is not my child. How you raise them has no impact on my life. But from my experience, the best way to create a fat grownup with food and body issues is put them on a diet as a child.

[veggiecat13]

08:40 PM on 02/03/2012

People don't get it unless they have lived it. My dieting started in secret at age 10. Then the docs get involved. And at age 10 we are talking 10 lbs overweight. How horrible is that. Distroy a person over 10 lbs and watch in become 100lbs by age 30. If someone had bult me up and told me all people are different and it's ok to be who I am my life would have been so different.

[CelticLuna]

12:19 PM on 05/07/2012

This is interesting to me. I started dieting at around age 10-12. My parents also were very very poor. There were a number of times when we ate crappy food like frozen meals because we could only afford to go food shopping once a month, and those were the cheapest. I'm only now at a place in my life where I can afford to eat healthy, and be healthy.

There are direct correlations to obesity and the income:debt ratio.

The best way to raise a child is not by shaming them into having body image issues at such a young age. The best way is to encourage activity, and to never shame your own body in front of them...

[cbellabean]

01:14 AM on 01/23/2012

Im an overweight parent and I have a healthy 5 year old son. I could never imagine letting him become over weight. I would never want to see him go through what I went through and still go through being an over weight person. Parents need to realize they are killing there kids physically and emotionally.....

[BlueGinger]

12:11 PM on 01/22/2012

education, education, education!!! whatever happened to health class? don't care for the billboard...i'm sure overweight children endure enough brutal honesty as it is.

[banksm2010]

10:03 PM on 01/22/2012

Thing is health and gym do not do enough. In Illinois, gym class is mandatory until high school graduation. Yet, it still doesn't help because people are fat because of their lifestyles outside of school. Its because of the home and their own lifestyles, like the kids in the video with fat parents. I am not sure you can really solve childhood obesity without looking at adult obesity. I have seen what fat parents feed their kids: portions that are meant for adults; then a few times more food for themselves.

[egal]

11:02 PM on 01/22/2012

It's more the parenting than the schooling that's the problem.

Hence the ads.

Don't like the ads, but have you BEEN to Georgia lately? Most of those parents honestly don't think it's a problem for their kids to be so seriously overweight they have breathing trouble specifically due to their weight--they think the kids will grow out of it and be fine, when all the longterm studies say these kids are drastically more likely to have health problems in adulthood IF they even live that long, and will have shorter and less healthy lives than their parents.

[magster]

11:22 AM on 01/22/2012

I don't think this is shaming kids. Its educating others about how it feels to be fat. Fat kids already know how it feels but parents, school boards, and adults need to be educated and encouraged to change it. Believe me I know. Maybe it will change the attitudes of the judgmental.

[Shirley Rosser]

08:02 AM on 01/22/2012

How sad. Let's teach our little girls they are not good enough. Maybe then they can grow up to look for love & approval in all the wrong places.

[egal]

11:03 PM on 01/22/2012

We already do teach them that.

Why not teach the parents they're not doing well enough by their children?

[Emily Renee Lingenfelser]

06:24 PM on 01/21/2012

These ad's seem to be trying to SHAME young children into losing weight, which I find disgusting. Spend the money that was wasted on these advertisements, that will probably do more harm than good, and get some education in schools about obesity and eating healthy. We should educate our kids, not bully them!

[egal]

11:06 PM on 01/22/2012

They're meant to shame the parents.

Who, frankly, NEED it. They don't understand the harm they're doing to their kids by NOT providing nutritious food, healthy play habits that involve exercise, and lifestyle adjustments that keep the kids from living on soda without leaving the couch.

Until we better fund social supports that provide for poor family's food needs and educate parents about the way they aree literally killing their children, a lot of stopgap efforts like this will continue to be made. Focus on solving the problems behind the issue, and then people won't continue coming up with ad campaigns like this.

[abbitha7]

03:05 PM on 01/21/2012

"The organizati­on also made a point to specifical­ly target parents. One TV spot shows a child looking miserable and asking his mother "Mom, why am I fat?" His equally overweight mother sighs and looks ashamed. "

I actually teared up at this one. It should absolutely hit home, especially for those parents who are making their children obese.

[AmericanItalian]

05:03 PM on 01/20/2012

People are bashing this ad. I ask in all honesty why?
Because It's offensive that someone may call a little girl fat?
Because it's heartless to display an obese child in an ad and call attention to a major problem?
Or is it because people just don't like others pointing fingers and don't want to draw attention to the problem?

We see ads with starving children on them asking for our money. But God forbid we see an ad with an overweight child on it saying "Eat Healthy". Yes unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food and yes there are many people who eat this way out of low income. But for any parent who didn't know there child is obese is simply unacceptable. As an adult you should know better and it is your job to take care of your child / children. It is not the government's job. I as parent needs a slap in the face wake up call with an ad like this I say Put these ads up everywhere.

[veggiecat13]

10:16 PM on 01/23/2012

"Eat healthy" is a positive message. Exacly when in these ads did you hear that? Because I didn't see any referance to a solution, or a single positive message. "Fat is bad" is pretty much all there is to these.

[AmericanItalian]

03:22 PM on 01/24/2012

Do you see the PSA on TV? It's a scare you straight type of ad. Being positive and sugar coating everything doesn't seem to work. Sometimes a little drastic wake up call is needed.
They do it with cigarettes, why not with obesity?

[blueyez090]

12:36 PM on 01/20/2012

i think this is really disgusting!!! childhood obesity is something that should be addressed but to do it in this manner with all the bullying that's going on in this world is just idiotic!!!