these letters are clearly a form of body shaming. it's meant to shame the child and parents to change behaviors. so, they might SAY that we just ignore it, or stop nagging me, but body shaming teenagers (publicly) can lead to really dangerous behaviors.


http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/04/29/3431941/public-health-consequences-fat-shaming/

This is probably not the way to go about it, though, for the reasons you mention.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

Because some of the states, mine for example, requires the schools to have the parents have the notice signed off on by the family doctor and returned to the school.

Very invasive. I've spent each year yelling at the administrators for sending it out to all three of my kids and have refused to have the documentation signed. any medical issues like that are between my kids doctor, my kids and I. Not the school and not the state.

Someone may have had good intentions but that's not the way to go about it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

It's one more person in the mix telling the kids something from a position of authority without any knowledge of the individual child's situation, genetic issues or other events that may be going on that are being treated.

I don't think he is too overweight and, frankly, I think his parents are giving too much of a hard time. When I was a kid, we would have called him "husky"

I mentioned he was adopted because I think, in cases like this, genetics is the issue. Both parents are tall and skinny.

The mom is a bit of a health nut and a great cook so the kid has had almost no junk food. The kid never had store made baby food. The mom made all his baby food from scratch.

Now they are seeing a nutritionist.

I just wonder how the kid feels about so much focus being on his weight.

There are better options but a lot of times a school district is forced to make do with a depressingly limited budget and this is the result, well-intentioned it may be.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

look at graduation pictures from 50 years ago versus today...

sad

You're a fucking piece of work.

Seriously. You realize what kinds of kids are getting these letters? The fifth grader who is as tall as a lot of seventh graders and is already out of sorts as his body copes with - his parents are quite tall as well.

The sixth grader who is naturally "underweight" for what constitutes a normal. She's just naturally skinny and no amount of working out or adding a lot of food will change her (at the moment).

But now they're shamed by it and feeling even worse on top of all the visual imagery that's thrown at them about how they should look.

Yeah, you can look at the graduation pictures from years ago and it may seem like they're all thin and proper young men and women. but that isn't the reality. How many of them were hiding dangerous actions and coping with diseases that had them throwing up, starving themselves and more.

And look at the differences in how our food intake as a nation has changed since then.

But no, blame the lazy fucking parents and call it sad.

You, sir, are what's fucking sad and it disgusts me.

Every time I go to Kroger I'll see some poor kid around 6 or 7 years old with rolls around his neck and moobs already. Parents giving him or her a rough start in life...

Those parents are what are fucking DISGUSTING when you see piles of crap food in the cart...

Especially since is BMI and nobody is getting bad report for being too tall or thin.

Lots of projection in your screed

And there's a growing number of people not pleased with it.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/08/26/why-bmi-isnt-the-best-measure-for-weight-or-health/

I've got an athletic 10 year old that plays a ton of sports and has a lot of muscle mass because of it. But his BMI, according to the school, has put him at obese. He's anything but.

And, it was wrong then. Muscle mass and dimensional corrections have been done for years and years, so that Time article was out of date for a long time, even when it was written.


Secondly, nothing in that article is about someone being too tall.

You're comparing apples to battleships

They're doing a disservice to all the kids, but especially the ones with a high BMI because they're athletic.

Like these girls, both of whom got "fat letters":

http://www.today.com/parents/mom-angry-after-school-sends-athletic-11-year-old-home-8C11356010

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/school-tells-tiny-girl-body-mass-index-high/story?id=29958111

I used to pretend I had simplistic non-answers to complex issues issues too. I'd pretend my anecdotal evidence was valid, and from it, I could create a rather creative and fictitious premise that I never had to support.

And being the child I was, I'd take exception to adults who pointed out my mental laziness.

Sad, indeed.

In exactly the same way that advertising cigarettes or hard liquor is illegal in certain settings. I also think it should be illegal to put commercial vending machines in public schools, and cafeterias need to be FUNDED again, and required to hit certain nutrition guidelines-- with no junk food 'options' present on campus at all.

This 'body report card' thing seems like it may be born of good intentions, but it's a band-aid on a cancer patient.

The problems in the food is in ~all~ food. It's changed so much and the times have changed so much in how meals are consumed that it's not something that you can pin down to just one thing. It's a massive cultural issue.

In my kids school system, they made these kinds of changes years ago and there's no junk food and a ton of healthy stuff. On the state level many have put in those kinds of protections as there's no soda machines any longer, candy and other stuff sold at the counters.

It's bad for people and they shouldn't eat it. It's up to the government to do what's best for people.

I get it. Not sure everyone will.

The corollary being every individual should maintain his or her own personal standards for weights and measurements. International standards for weights and measurements are bad and people shouldn't use them. It's up to people to decide what's best for people...

Six of one, half a dozen of the other... and both as irrelevant (and as petulant) as the other.

Do you think any regulations on advertising are good?

Studies have shown that kids are markedly more susceptible to advertising than adults, and specifically that children who watch ads for junk food eat much higher amounts of those junk foods than kids who don't see those ads.

why stop at just limiting the advertising? Surely, even without any advertising, some kids will still eat junk food. Why only protect some kids (the ones influenced by advertising) and not all of them? Isn't outlawing the advertising just a larger band-aid on the same cancer patient?

Enough with the slippery slope nonsense.

even without the advertising? Cigarettes are already illegal for children, junk food is not.

You're the one trying to make some slippery slope, 'save everyone from themselves' argument-- not me.

Advertising junk food to children should be illegal, imho, because kids are much more susceptible to advertising, and our childhood obesity rates are out of control. Manufacturers can make it all they like, but they shouldn't be able to stick commercials for their garbage in the middle of cartoon shows.

You can say 'it's the parents' responsibility' all you like, it doesn't change the situation. Yes, they should be dealing with it. They aren't. So now what? You say, 'fuck 'em, then'. I think that's an unacceptable answer.

I'm honestly amazed that anyone would argue for Nabisco's 'right' to pitch Double Stuff Oreos to kindergartners while they're watching Sponge Bob. They have no such right. The legality of the product is completely immaterial. I'm talking about advertising-- a field with established standards of regulation. Nabisco's advertising 'rights' are whatever we as a community say they are.

Do you want to fix the problem, or just throw a band aid on it. You were the one that compared it to cigarettes. Cigarette advertising to children is illegal. Selling cigarettes to children is illegal. You want to make junk food advertising to children illegal for basically the same reason. Why NOT make its sale to children illegal as well?

I realize that would be easier to argue against, but it's not what I'm talking about.

So why not regulate children's advertising a bit differently on the subject of junk food? Why on earth would anyone defend junk food manufacturer's ability to place ads in the middle of children's television shows?

Do you feel that junk food and cigarettes pose roughly equivalent health risks to children? I have the impression that you do, although you haven't explicitly said so, so I could be wrong.

I mean, we're going to chase each others' tails here. The point you're using to facetiously suggest we ban junkfood can just as well be turned around to facetiously suggest we make cigarettes and alcohol legal for children.

I have no idea how cigarettes compare to junk food as a general health risk. What I know is that we have absurdly widespread rates of childhood obesity, that obese children tend to become obese adults, and that obesity is strongly correlated with a host of accompanying health problems.

Since children have proven markedly more susceptible to advertising, and children have specifically been shown to consume much more of the junk foods that are advertised to them, some sensible ad regulation seems to me to be in order.

In the small-town high school and elementary school I went to, the coaches and administration (and many times teachers) were simply FAT.
I don't mean 20 pounds overweight like myself, I mean they were simply fat.
Beer gut out to there...

who is supposed to be a senior next month, has been grossly obese since early childhood. In middle school she weighed 320 pounds, and was experiencing micro-fractures in her feet and lower legs.

Every year...every year, we talked to her parents, we called in outside nurses, we tried. And failed. Her parents were simply not willing to enforce lifestyle changes on the family, or to help her address this issue by herself, either. This summer? She can't walk without assistance any more.