From today’s Wall Street Journal:
Overweight Kids Learn Willpower With a Sniff and a Nibble
How researchers are helping overweight kids train their brains to resist temptationThoughts occur:
#1. Hasn’t this been tried before?
#2. Other than sounding scientifical, how does “train their brains” do any work that “exercise self-restraint” does not? For a take-down of vacuous claims made in the name of neuroscience, see Brainwashed by Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld.
#3. “Behavioral Director of the Weight and Wellness Clinic” is academese for “fitness consigliere.”
#4. Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a psychologist.
#5. Kerri Boutelle, the clinical psychologist running this study, is addicted to cute acronyms: there’s HOME (Healthy Home Offerings via the Mealtime Environment), and HOPE (Health and Obesity: Prevention and Education) and FRESH (Family, Responsibility, Education, Support, and Health) and CHEAR (Center for Healthy Eating and Activity Research)
#5. Whoa, for a minute there I thought I was gonna PUKE (Parody Unfortunate Kerri’s Education).
EXIT QUESTIONS: Suppose obese New Jersey governor Chris Christie was presented a bill “outlawing therapy that aims to convert obese children to normal size.” Would he sign it? On what basis would he veto it?
3 comments:
Astonishing, who would have believed that children can learn self control when their every whim is not immediately indulged ?!
I am tempted to...NO you are not!...I am almost tempted again...CONTROLLLL YOURSELF YOUNG LADY!!!!....but I am tempted to....YOU CAN"T YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF YOUR MIND!!!... but...oh WTF!
Remember everybody, the point is that to raise kids It Takes a Village plus scads of clinical psychologists, social workers, school counselors, Ed-school professors, and meddlesome billionaire nanny-mayors.
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