Here‘s news of a study that indicates reading books can help children lose weight:
In a study of 45 girls, those who read a book which promoted exercise and a healthy lifestyle saw their body mass index drop.
Researchers at North Carolina’s Duke Children’s Hospital in America gave 31 obese girls, aged between 9 and 13, a novel called Lake Rescue which has an overweight girl in it.
They discovered that six months later the girls who read the book had a reduced BMI of almost one per cent.
The sample is ridiculously small and therefore not, in my opinion, reliable as science, but it’s certainly interesting. Fiction matters. Fiction changes our lives. Fiction is good for you (as well as being, y’know, delicious). The stories we tell really do make a difference. I’ve written about this before but, hey, now there’s (the beginnings of) proof.
Nicola Griffith 
That is so incredibly interesting–I’d love to know how the overweight girl is portrayed. Mmm, guess I’ll request the book from the library.
You know, it never occurred to me to wonder about the book itself–though I suspect that it’s a rather poor ‘message’ novel. Imagine what could happen if the book was really *well* written…
You should check out the whole series — they are first and foremost fun stories for tweens but each one does teach important life lessons and address situations that preteen girls are familiar with — being the new kid in school, making friends, even “tougher” topics like cyber-bullying and Internet Gossip. Lake Rescue was created with overweight kids in mind but it is also a fun story and is often cited as a particular favorite among Beacon Street Girls fans who enjoy the story about a class field trip. On the other end of the spectrum, Fashion Frenzy, (book 9 in the series) addresses unrealistic body image and fashion’s impact on girls’ views of their weight.
Okay, cool. As long as they’re good stories–more than Healthy Messages wrapped in thinly drawn characters. Thanks for the info.