BY ERICA COGHILL
You're watching multisource health video news analysis from Newsy.
It hasn’t even hit the shelves and it’s already causing quite the controversy…
“Maggie Goes on A Diet,” …it’s a book about a 14-year-old girl who makes the transformation from extremely overweight and unhappy, to thin, athletic and popular.
On the Today Show neither guest doctor nor celebrity Star Jones gave the book much fanfare.
“Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, diet shouldn’t even be in a child’s lexicon.”
“The word diet in the title is what gives me pause. Maggie got healthy or Maggie is fierce. And as part of being fierce, we talk about good eating habits and exercise.”
In an interview with CNN, the book’s author, Paul Kramer, explains why he chose to use the word ‘diet’...
“Maggie did go on an exercise and healthy eating program, and I will say that Maggie did not have to go on a diet, Maggie chose to go on a diet in this book, and Maggie's purpose of going on a diet as reported earlier was not so she could get more friends. She really wanted to go on a diet so she could run easily, run faster.”
Amazon recommends the book for kids 8 and up. Kramer says he wrote the rhyming picture book wants to empower young people to make healthy food choices.
Some people have taken to social media to say they’re not buying his argument.
There’s a Facebook page titled “Say No to Maggie Goes on a Diet,” that warns it could lead to kids developing eating disorders.
Heck, this thing’s gotten so much attention, it has its own twitter hashtag… #savemaggie.
With people sitting on either side of the fence on this one, West Palm Beach's WFLX points out the book might have misunderstand, but it does raise important issues:
“It's a huge problem today. Maybe this particular book or cover may not have hit it right on, but childhood obesity is such a problem I mean, you got to give kudos for starting that discourse.”
CBC News interviewed a 12-year-old, to get the opinion that might matter most:
“Basically it says that to be popular, you have to be skinny and to be popular you have to be good at sports.”
Does the book send the wrong message? You can find out when it’s released in Canada in October and sold on Amazon.
Transcript by Newsy.
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