Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) says a recent Harvard study that recommends obese children be taken from their homes and put in foster care is “frightening.”The report published in The Journal of the American Medical Association claims that putting obese children in foster care will help them lose weight and eat better. But IWF’s Julie Gunlock says the study’s authors seem oblivious to the harm that could cause children.

“I want to be clear — the foster care system is filled with people who really care about kids, but it is overburdened,” she contends. “There are a variety of reasons why children and why adults can be obese or overweight; it is not always because of negligence.”

But it is most important for proponents of this idea, along with those who back the new dietary methods, that children be thin and physically fit to trump any emotional distress or lifetime scars that could result from separating them from their parents.

“That’s really creepy stuff. We need to get control of this,” Gunlock concludes.