This morning, a friend alerted me to an article on NPR's Shots blog. The headline: To Curb Childhood Obesity, Experts Say Keep Fat Babies in Check.

It immediately pissed me off, of course. This formerly disordered eater worried incessantly about my fat baby girl. The girl people stopped me on the street to comment about. I've been watching with interest the comments on a post on BlogHer about fat talk around children. Some people are adamently opposed (as am I) and some people think it's our job as parents to limit kids' eating and make sure they don't gain too much weight.

My daughter has been "normal" weight since she was about two, and she's always been able to stop eating when she's full -- even if she's halfway through a chocolate shake. I've always praised her for stopping when she's full, but I've never stopped her from eating dessert. I don't want her to have a weird relationship with food. I just want her to eat when she's hungry, stop when she's full, and mix in some vegetables.

However, the NPR article was talking about babies and toddlers, and here are some of the tips they gave:

Cut down the time children spend watching TV or using the computer or cell phone.

We are talking about babies and toddlers. My baby was off the charts for her first full year, and I swear to you that she only used the computer or her cell phone for an hour a day.

Make sure kids are getting the right food portions for their age.

I monitored my daughter's milk intake like a hawk for that first six months. I don't care how hungry she was! I pulled that bottle or boob out of her mouth the second she hit her age-appropriate limit.

So parents and child care providers can do small kids a favor by not letting them get too big, even if that means turning off Nickelodeon.

I'm working on a post for BlogHer (I'll share a link here when it goes up) regarding an interview I recently did with a PPD/ED specialist at UNC. We got to talking about body types and how they impact eating disorder recovery. She told me some of her patients have had to eat thousands of calories a day to recover from anorexia. I gained weight very quickly just by returning to 1200 calories a day -- what would be considered dieting for most women. "I'm a very efficient food storer," I told her. "I would do well in a survival situation. I'm just not often in them."

We talked about how every body is different; every body processes food differently. And I am really sick of the media admonishing new mothers and bequeathing upon them personal responsibility for every aspect of their children's health. The degree of personal responsibility is getting ridiculous.

Yes, duh, parents shouldn't give their toddlers a straight Diet Coke, tequila and Spam diet. Yes, of course we should encourage our kids to get outside and play. But hello, world -- some kids are genetically hardwired to be a little bigger. Sometimes they slim down naturally with age, sometimes they don't. It may have everything to do with what they eat and! It may have nothing to do with what they eat. Weighing them and admonishing them and making a big deal about their weight when they are eating the same or less as the stick-skinny kid sitting next to them in the cafeteria is not helpful. In fact, it can be extremely harmful.

And. Telling a nervous new mother that she holds the keys to every aspect of her child's health -- that it is all her fault if the baby is fat -- is a great way to program a weight-watching, harping mother who will ultimately give her child a complex about food.

I really wish the media would take more responsibility for objective reporting when it comes to health news. In politics, we generally get two sides of the story. These health studies are so one-sided, so judgy. Yes, there is a childhood obesity problem in the U.S. -- I acknowledge that wholly. But I look around my racially diverse but economically homogenous neighborhood, and I don't see one obese child. Not one. I go to Midtown Kansas City, where it's racially diverse and economically diverse, and I see tons. In addition to genetics and diet, childhood obesity has a lot to do with economics -- whether kids have access to sports and camps that allow them to run and play, whether they have access to yards and bikes and streets safe to ride bikes on. Whether they have access to fruits and vegetables that don't come out of a very salty can. Whether they have something to do besides watch TV while mom and dad work.

Childhood obesity isn't necessarily something we can blame on personal responsibility of the parents. We, as a nation, owe kids safe streets and bikes and subsidized, exercise-and-fresh-air-oriented childcare and camps. We as a nation put everything on working parents -- we don't help out with childcare, we don't help out with healthy food, we don't help out with transportation to camps and sports for kids whose parents don't have cars or can't get off work to take them.

There are two sides to every story. One side of this story is personal responsibility of the parents to not let their toddlers exist on a steady diet of Ho-Hos. The other side of the story is access. We like to ignore that side, because it's a much harder thing to face. The media needs to start covering that side of the story, because until we acknowledge it, we won't do anything about it.