Childhood Obesity

Admittedly, this is a slightly off topic to bring up in my first post back after such a long absence, but it keeps coming back around to me. I was at a birthday party the other week, which consisted of several ladies sitting around swapping stories about motherhood and it's counter part, children. For a while, I was the only woman there that had more than three children, when in fact most of the other ladies only had one toddler.
I sat and listened to the newer mothers talk about how their toddlers were in a low body weight percentile, according to their doctor's office, and that they were told to feed their children a "high calorie diet." I could definitely sympathize, I had this very same thing happen with my first child. Then when we were having our second child, I was a little bit braver and interviewed pediatricians while I was pregnant. The doctor that we ended up choosing, had been recommendation and I told her that I was not going to tolerate someone trying to force me to feed my children in an unhealthy manner, just to meet a quota. Really, can a child help if they come from a mother who is petite, and her whole family is petite?!
I was so happy when that doctor said it wouldn't be a problem, just as long as the child maintained his own growth curve and didn't experience any sudden drops or spikes in weight.
So, here's my advice to new moms, and moms who haven't found the mommy lioness in themselves yet, feed your children healthy food!!! Don't expect two year-olds to eat very much, one day they will eat well and then not eat anything but juice for two days. That's just how 2 year-olds are. Make sure that you are offering them a variety of healthy foods, and oh yes, I forgot, when they start crawling, walking, and running they wont be chubby babies any more.
We have a child obesity epidemic people, I can't believe that some doctors are still recommending a "high-calorie diet" of extra butter, cheese and other fatty foods, as if we were still back in the 1950s.