Dear Anti-Obesity Campaign,

How about
"A healthy way to deal with your problems,"
"Finding things to do outside,"
"Walk, bike, or bus, not drive,"
"Grow your own food,"
"Meet a local farmer,"
"Fruit tastes better than candy"
"Meet friends in your community"
"A Happy You starts with a Healthy Heart"
"The media makes money of off making you feel inadequate, don't listen!"

There are lots of ideas I could list as a better alternative to the Anti-Obesity Campaign.  One of the many problems with this campaign is that it it tackles a side effect, not a problem.  Are these kids having trouble at home?  Are their parents not buying healthy food?  Are they lonely?  Depressed?  Maybe they don't have access to healthy choices.  Maybe food is the only thing they feel like they can control.  I just feel this campaign is brash; why not just have an anti-alcoholic campaign?  Alcoholism, like over-eating, is a complex emotional situation that is always about more than the alcohol.

It also seems ostracizing.  It is not black and white- you are not either skinny or fat.  And who says?  Exercise should be done not to look better but to have a healthy heart and mind at any size.  It is everywhere in society that we should look like the "healthy" models on the cover of every magazine and photoshopped page so that we feel unhappy with our "imperfections" (we are told that is what they are) so that someone can bank off of marketing a product that makes us more acceptable.

Okay, maybe the campaign is not directly selling anything- but it contributes to a huge problem in America- thinking you have to be a certain size to feel accepted.  Over-eating is a personal problem, one that requires psychological understanding and delicacy.  No!?  -you say?  Fine- at the very LEAST it requires attention to the causes- processed foods, industrial farming, lack of fresh eating- how about implementing different kinds of exercise into public schools that people actually like?  Not everyone has the confidence for team sports.  Some people, myself included, might benefit from a different form of exercise- like yoga or martial arts. 

At any rate, by making "a problem" out of what already is their problem -that is not a healthy approach to this complex matter.  Especially when so many of the problems causing this are laced throughout the media and the systems that "feed" us information daily.