Maggie Goes on a Diet: A Story for Children?

With a title like Maggie Goes on a Diet, it's hard to believe author and publisher Paul Kramer did not anticipate the criticism he and his publishing house would receive when the book recently appeared on Amazon for pre-order. Not even in print yet, this book has been hurtled into the middle of the ongoing debate regarding childhood obesity, eating disorders, and how exactly to teach young children about healthy eating habits.

If the title doesn't make you cringe, maybe the product description will: "This book is about a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet and is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal sized girl who becomes the school soccer star. Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self image." Add to that the book's reading level—ages 4 to 8—and the cover image of an overweight girl imagining a thinner self in the mirror, and the result seems more likely to cause psychological damage than a desire to eat better and exercise.

The public's reaction is split. Some believe the book at least provides a healthy alternative to poor eating and no exercise; others say it could spark eating disorders. Time quotes psychologist Carolyn Becker, who sides against the title: "They are trying to promote healthier behavior, but at the same time they're likely promoting weight stigma …. For some people, getting healthier may or may not lead to significant weight loss. It's also quite possible to lose weight on an unhealthy diet." Yet many believe Maggie's approach to weight loss is healthy and applaud her efforts. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The key—as Maggie discovered—is not only to eat healthier foods but to exercise."

As reasonable as the Times sounds, something that stems from years of images of perfect bodies thrust in our faces has many women in an uproar about Maggie's experience.

Despite my strong feelings, I do not believe Kramer has malicious intent. I believe what he told Good Morning America: "My intentions were just to write a story to entice and to have children feel better about themselves, discover a new way of eating, learn to do exercise, try to emulate Maggie and learn from Maggie's experience." I believe that was your intent, Kramer. I also believe you don't have a clue. Not a clue what it feels like to be an overweight 14-year-old girl, not a clue why girls turn to food, or refuse food, in order to cope with their crumbling surroundings, and especially not a clue how to teach children where true happiness lies.

The moral of his story is that people will stop making fun of you when you finally conform to their expectations, and when people stop making fun of you, you can feel good about yourself. A moral that blatantly grates against the Christian values of God judging our hearts, of being not of this world, and of finding confidence and identity in Christ and only Christ. But this discrepancy is obvious to the evangelical, and a message not unique to Maggie Goes on a Diet.

The root of my frustration with this book runs deeper, into the way it simplifies the female relationship with food, reducing deep issues with it to nothing more than a series of unhealthy choices easily rectified with healthy ones. Unbeknownst to Kramer, he has made a serious situation petty. In a way, though, so has the church.

When discussing dieting and health foods, how often does biblical counsel come up? The Bible says a lot about food and exercise (Prov. 23:20, Phil. 4:5, and 1 Tim. 4:8, to name a few), but that's easy to forget. And in that forgetfulness, the relationship gets complicated, dependencies form, and food becomes an enemy or your best friend—neither of which are roles nonliving objects should play.

G. K. Chesterton understood this complexity, noting, "The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. Health is the most unhealthy of topics." Will something always have to give?

The truth is, I wish life were as simple as Maggie Goes on a Diet, that when a teenage girl over or under eats, there is no history of trauma or abuse causing her to do so; she just is, and therefore, changing her habits is as simple as changing her mind. I wish we as women would not complicate food into something God never made it to be: a source of guilt, comfort, good or bad, right or wrong. But many of us have and now must reverse years of skewed thoughts on what healthy means.

In attempt to prevent this skewed thinking in future generations, I'm currently working on Maggie Goes to College: The Sequel to Maggie Goes on a Diet. The Amazon product description will go something like this: "Maggie went to college, and there she met girls that were prettier, skinnier, and better soccer players than she was. She began to lose her confidence and grew anxious. She had already lost weight and become popular. Now did she have to lose more weight and somehow become more popular? That seemed so impossible and very exhausting. She began to wonder if she was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. Could it be that God intended more for her life? She began to think so."

Andrea Lucado lives in Nashville, Tenn., where she works in book publicity by day and freelance writes by night. She also blogs on Mondays and yes, she is daughter to Max.