Family eating at a table
Category: Children's Health, Health Magazine

Title:Beyond obesity

Author: Jane Varner Malhotra
Date Published: November 12, 2021

A children’s health concern often cited in marginalized communities is obesity. Access to nutritious foods and safe places to play outdoors may be part of the problem, but D.C. nutritionist Patrilie Hernandez (G’16) underscores the importance of body liberation for children and families.

“It’s a way to deconstruct the beliefs we have with our bodies and the relationships we have with food and movement— about health in general—and see how they’re informed by dominant power systems,” Hernandez explains. “In early childhood, it’s critical to establish and nurture a healthy relationship to food, feeding time, sharing space with others. Because it’s the whole package—not just about what you put in your mouth,” says Hernandez.

On the obesity-hunger paradox, she notes that weight stigma should be handled with care, and that food security is about more than having enough to eat. Some ideas of which foods are healthy are culturally biased. Being fed also means having access to culturally relevant food, like beans and rice or bags of cornmeal for tortillas if that’s food a family typically prepares.

Hernandez adds that healthy eating is not just the nutrition content, but also food as experience, the sharing of food at mealtime, the meaning of food during ceremonies— all these contribute to whole health and well-being, and can be in short supply when a family is dependent on food donations.

More from this Issue

Children in masks

A children’s health concern often cited in marginalized communities is obesity. Access to nutritious foods and safe places to play outdoors may be part of the problem, but D.C. nutritionist…

Parent and child walking illustration

1 of 1 Next Slide Prvious Slide Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center’s youngest patients receive research-guided, holistic care throughout the cancer journey Jeffrey…

Teddy in blanket

Answering the call to serve families in need When Staceyann Smith, MD, MPH (NHS’09), began practicing pediatrics in the Bronx, New York City’s northernmost borough, she knew she was choosing…