How's your truffle shuffle?

I went back and forth on this one over the last few days.

From the AP: Experts Debate Labeling Children Obese

That's right. This isn't about dealing with child obesity. Just the wording. They don't want to call kids grossly overweight.

The rebuttal for the rewording argument seems like a gimme: "Why are we being so politically correct?"

Then, you get the retort: "But wait... the kids have very little (if any) say over their daily diet. Their caretakers (if available, one hopes) are fairly responsible for the kid's health here."

But now I'm back to the former. Besides avoiding the negative connotation the word "obese" exhibits, the US government uses terms such as "at risk of overweight" because kids may not be able to comprehend the term "obese." That's a good way to resolve it. More words. Kids like wordy explanations. Long and verbose. Perhaps with a slide show, even.

It seems fairly ridiculous to pull punches about something like this that, in a way, is self-inflicted. Sometimes the truth hurts. It can significantly sting in a country like ours where image makes scores of young girls and boys so superficial and self-concious about their looks. The thing is, you can't find resolution to a problem such as obesity unless you can talk about it actively. Give it a name. And stick with that name. Leave the name changing PR stunts to the professionals. (If you don't understand that reference, you can read about it here.)

And this is coming from a guy who has an affinity for fat kids, trust me...