According to Reason.com, the Puerto Rican government is now proposing a new law that will label parents of fat kids as "Child Abusers". That's a harsh step towards dealing with the issue of obesity amongst kids.
We all know that obesity has become a huge issue around the world. It is known that the number of people who are obese have almost doubled since 1980s. The World Health Organization shows that 39 percent of the adult population is overweight and that 13 percent of them are obese. If we combine overweight and obese people in Puerto Rico, it adds up to 66 percent, which is huge. Out of that 66 percent, 24 to 30 of them are kids.
So, Senator Gilbert Rodriguez Valle has now introduced a bill that would label the parents of fat kids as child abusers. Once it's passed, they will be establishing a process of identifying obese children in school and will be sending social workers to investigate the families. If, after a year, there are no improvements, the parents will be then fined up to $800.
It is acceptable that the parents play a huge role in the eating habits of their kids, but there are a lot of other factors at play here, such as education, friends, social norms, the food that's available and also, the genes. There is no simple solution to this complex problem.
We already have a history of countries who tried to create laws to eradicate obesity and took a stab. Denmark is one of them. They enacted a tax on foods that contained more than 2.3 percent of saturated fat in 2011.
Eventually, it didn't have the effect they expected. The law simply inflated food prices and there were no reduction in the waist sizes. At the end, they had to abolish the tax a year after that and they also had to cancel their next plan of enacting a tax on sugary foods.
