History of Fat Camps
The first summer camp for children was established in 1860, near Washington, D.C. It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century, between 1880 and 1910, that camping began to really catch on. At this time, many prominent people, including Teddy Roosevelt's father and the founder of the Boy Scouts, believed it was important to get poor children out of crowded, crime-ridden, polluted cities and into the beauty of nature. Their now-famous slogan was "Help Send This Child to Camp."
By the 1960s, there were tens of thousands of summer camps, and many had begun to specialize. Camp Napanoch in Napanoch, N.Y., which opened in 1963, was the first to specialize in weight loss, but it went out of business in 1966. Despite that failure, by 1988, there were 84 weight loss camps for children, mostly located within driving distance of New York City. The Weight Watchers organization operated about a dozen of them, as well as many day camps.
These early camps were imitations of expensive spa programs for adult women. The idea was to lose weight as quickly as possible by going on a drastic diet and performing calisthenics. At that time, "fat farms" for celebrities and movie stars were often located in glamorous resorts in California. The settings were attractive, but the programs were grueling. The daily food intake was limited to between 400 and 900 calories. Some spas used "slimming powders" and other extreme methods to get a movie star in shape for her next role or to slim down a wealthy woman for her wedding.
In the 1960s and 1970s, children's "fat camps" appeared, with a similar emphasis on weight loss for beauty, not health. The vast majority of campers were young girls, ages 8 to 18. Some of them were not clinically overweight; they just wanted to become fashionably slim. These "fat camps" featured highly restricted diets, usually less than 1,200 calories, and a regime of calisthenics, often performed in indoor gymnasiums. In the afternoons, the girls went to workshops in make-up, hair, wardrobe, posture, and "charm."
As the second wave of feminism picked up momentum, more parents became reluctant to send their daughters to "fat camps" for several reasons. In this era of "girl power," mothers and teachers began encouraging girls to concentrate less on their appearance and more on their future careers and contributions to society. Science was providing more information about the connection between childhood dieting and later eating disorders, including life-threatening ones like anorexia. Finally, more and more data indicated that expensive "fat camps" simply did not work. Most campers quickly regained all the weight they lost over the summer. The camps were mostly filled with repeat customers, and by this time, the word had gotten around.
By the mid-1990s, the American Camp Association listed only between 15 and 20 weight loss camps out of 10,000, and that figure remains true today.
Nowadays, some of the better weight loss camps are taking a radically different approach from the old style "fat camps" of the 1960s. They are catering to parents who are less concerned about their child's beauty and more concerned about their child's health. These parents are alarmed by the latest research that links childhood obesity to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and other serious diseases that are showing up among today's teenagers. They feel that doing nothing about their child's weight is no longer an option because the stakes are too high.
The emphasis at weight loss camps is shifting from losing weight to changing habits and lifestyles. Some of the better camps are now associated with top universities and use their latest scientific research to develop their programs. Young boys and girls learn about nutrition and healthy eating, and many enjoy sports for the first time. The better camps have aftercare programs that involve the child's family, so that the weight loss will last long after the child returns home. While the vast majority of the children in old-style fat camps quickly regained their weight, the new camps that emphasize lifestyle changes are producing drastically improved outcomes.
