Virginia Sole-Smith, a ‘fat activist,’ has sparked controversy for saying childhood obesity is not a problem, anti-fat bias is and that she lets her children eat whatever they want – even against the wishes of her former husband who caught his daughter eating a stick of butter.
She is the author of ‘Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture’ and an advocate of dismantling diet culture and anti-fat bias.
‘We don’t parent body size,’ Sole-Smith said on the Pressure Cooker podcast. ‘How your child is eating and how much they move their body is really the smallest piece of the puzzle. When you focus on that with the goal of controlling your child’s weight, you do a lot of harm.’
While Sole-Smith’s book is a New York Times bestseller and many turn to her for parenting advice, others believe she is promoting a dangerous lifestyle.
‘It’s not OK to be overweight, it’s not OK to eat excess sugar and animal fats, it’s not OK to eat junk food, it’s not OK to not move your body, it’s not OK to advocate being overweight is all good,’ Caroline Hailstone said on one of Sole Smith’s Instagram posts.
Virginia Sole-Smith (pictured), author of ‘Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture,’ said childhood obesity is not a problem, anti-fat bias is
Sole-Smith said she and her ex-husband, Dan Upham (right), had a fight when their daughter ate a whole stick of butter and she did not want to stop her daughter from eating it
‘Being a healthy weight is ok having a good layer of body fat is healthy but advocating unhealthy eating as you do will only drive diabetes up hospital visits up and mortality rates up.’
Sole-Smith told The New York Times in her house they do not label foods as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, and she serves her two children dessert and snacks along with their dinner.
She said that if parents put restrictions on food, their children will not be able to figure out how to feed themselves based on what their bodies need.
While speaking with the Times, the mother of two served her daughters broccoli, chicken and brownies for dinner. After they had a few bites to eat, the girls are allowed to play in the yard and read books at the dinner table.
Sole-Smith started her career working for women’s magazines in the early 2000s and said at that point in her life she was running half-marathons.
‘They were the “can you have it all” years. You’re going for the big job. You’re going for the perfect body. You’re going for the great marriage. You’re going for motherhood. You’re going for the perfect home,’ she said.
She started to re-evaluate her relationship with food after daughter was diagnosed with a heart defect and had to eat through a feeding tube.
During the pandemic, her husband turned to working out while Sole-Smith said she found the value of comfort eating.
‘I deserve softness. I deserve a little tenderness. Everything is chaos. It’s nice I can make brownies,’ she said.
Sole-Smith also said she is against doctors prescribing weight loss and a solution to health problems and that they should treat patients as they are.
‘It doesn’t matter what people’s health status is. Right? Drug addicts are worthy of dignity and respect in medical care. Like, it doesn’t matter whether you caused it, doctors are supposed to meet you where you are,’ Sole-Smith said.
‘Health is a resource and a privilege so many people don’t have access to. Is health that I eat this broccoli for dinner? Or is health that I managed to have a few minutes of connection with my daughter today?’
Sole-Smith is against doctors prescribing weight loss and a solution to health problems and that they should treat patients as they are
She said that if parents put restrictions on food, their children will not be able to figure out how to feed themselves based on what their bodies need
Data shows obesity rates among youngsters quadrupled globally between 1990 and 2022 – the latest year available – while rates among adults more than doubled, researchers found.
This means obesity is now the most common form of malnutrition in many countries, according to the study published in the Lancet medical journal.
The obesity rate among American adults increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men.
Over the same period, the rate almost doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among US girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys.
According to the CDC, included in the top ten leading caused of death in the United States is heart disease, diabetes and liver disease.
‘I think it’s possible to simultaneously hold in your mind that the condition of obesity is concerning, while at the same time protecting the rights of the people who have it,’ said Kelly Brownell, a professor emeritus of public policy at Duke University.
‘You can think of many other parallels, like depression or alcoholism, where you don’t want the people who have these things to be stigmatized — there are clearly negative effects of that — but it doesn’t mean you discount the ravages of those diseases.’
Sole-Smith’s controversial attitude towards what should be considered a healthy diet has sparked a debate that she even experienced in her own marriage.
She told The New York Times she and her ex-husband, Dan Upham, had a fight when their daughter ate a whole stick of butter.
Sole-Smith her daughter ate the stick because she thought it was cheese and Upham wanted to intervene and stop her from eating it.
‘If I put butter on the table and a kid wants to eat the butter, that’s fine with me,’ Sole-Smith said.
The couple announced their split after 14 years of marriage and nearly 25 years together in the summer of 2023.
‘We would all do a lot better to be less afraid of divorce, just as we would do a lot better to be less afraid of being fat,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t matter what people’s health status is. Right? Drug addicts are worthy of dignity and respect in medical care. Like, it doesn’t matter whether you caused it, doctors are supposed to meet you where you are,’ Sole-Smith said
The obesity rate among American adults increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men
Between 1990 and 2022, the rate almost doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among US girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys
Sole-Smith faced backlash for a New York Times opinion piece about the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for treating children with obesity.
‘We cannot solve anti-fat bias by making fat kids thin, she said.
Dr. Barry Reiner, a pediatric endocrinologist in Baltimore slammed Sole-Smith for not acknowledging weight can have an impact on children’s health.
‘Additional complications of childhood obesity include ovarian dysfunction, liver and cardiovascular damage, disabling orthopedic conditions and sleep apnea, among others,’ Reiner said in a letter to the editor.
‘In each instance that we are able to alter the trajectory of unhealthy weight gain in a child, we are markedly improving that child’s likelihood of a normal life span and quality of life.’
