> The comprehensive overhaul of recommendations for treating kids with obesity includes a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and bariatric surgery, an operation that should be the last resort for even the most severe cases. > But Virginia Sole-Smith, the author of “Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture,” which comes out in April, is terrified for all the wrong reasons. According to Sole-Smith, the medical community’s remaining stigmas against excessive weight are problematic. > “The guidelines are rooted in a premise that should have been rejected long ago: that weight loss is the best path to health and happiness,” Sole-Smith wrote. “The academy’s guidelines are the latest sally in the war on obesity that health care providers, public health officials and the general public have waged to shrink our bodies for over 40 years. The approach hasn’t worked; Americans, including kids, are not getting thinner.”