Obese Kids Aren't Making the Grade at School

The New York Times reports today that kids all over the country are getting a new kind of report card. One that tells moms and dads whether their kids are “fat.”? Well, it doesn’t use that terminology, but the front page story by Jodi Kantor writes that Pennsylvania is one state where school officials are telling parents the “body mass index”? of their kids. A formula for figuring a healthy height/weight relationship.

But there and elsewhere, the children's BMIs are off the charts.

Like American adults, today’s children are getting fat, and getting fatter faster, than at any other time in our history. Less exercise, easier access to fatty foods and, I’m guessing, parents who don’t want to tell their kids “no”? about anything, least of all food, is largely to blame.

What’s also to blame is that we live in a “feel good society”? in which we love to love ourselves. Kantor quotes the homecoming queen at one high school who is a size 20. That’s right. A 20. That means she is obese, maybe morbidly obese. Guess what? The young woman, Holly, is already insulin dependent, the precursor to Type II diabetes, a debilitating condition cause almost exclusively by obesity. But no matter, Holly feels great about herself. “I don’t care how big I am. . . it’s not what you look like, it’s who you are.”?

Well who Holly is is a young woman who faces a huge risk of premature death, and a host of serious illnesses caused by her obesity in the meantime.

Parents in Holly’s community, whose children are above even the national average when it come to being overweight, are shocked at the “report cards.”? Look, the “BMI”? reports more and more states are adopting seem a little intrusive to me too. But if they shock some schools into ditching the high calorie snacks, drinks and deserts they offer during the day, that may be a start. More importantly, if they shock parents into saying to their children, “honey you shouldn’t feel ”˜good’ about yourself if you are really overweight”? — and if they help parents to start “just saying no”? to their kids and that extra helping of fries, the shock value may have really done its job.