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Childhood obesity bill approved
The Associated Press


ATLANTA— The state Senate on Friday passed legislation aimed at curbing childhood obesity in Georgia by weighing students twice a year in order to track the state’s population of overweight pupils.
The legislation sparked heated debate between supporters who said it’s needed to rein in the explosion of obese kids in Georgia and opponents who labeled it a “nanny state” bill.
The measure passed 37-13.
It mandates that schools obtain the body mass index of each student and provide that confidential data only to the child’s parents or guardian. Body mass index is a health indicator calculated using height and weight.
Once collected, the data would be provided in aggregate form to the state Board of Education and the averages would be posted on each school district’s Web site for the public to inspect.
Individual districts could then decide what — if any — steps to take in its physical education curriculum.
The movement to track overweight pupils began in Arkansas under then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, now a Republican presidential candidate who has written and talked about his own dramatic weight loss. A number of other states have adopted similar measures.
Supporters portrayed the measure as a small step toward tackling the rising problem of obesity in Georgia’s children. The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Joseph Carter, R-Tifton, said that nearly one-in-three children in Georgia is obese or at risk of obesity.
“In Georgia, the prevalence of childhood obesity is staggering,” Carter said.
But state Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, said there need to be some limits on where “the long arm of government” can reach. Smith that if the bill became law, there would be a financial incentive to stigmatize overweight children.
He speculated that the end result could be a coach shouting at an overweight child “come on, fat kid pick it up we’re not going to get money if you don’t.”
The bill now moves to the House.

Copyright © 1999-2006 cnhi, inc.

I seriously hope schools don't weigh the kids in front of each other.

I have a vague recollection of being weighed, measured, and being given vision and hearing tests by the school nurse when I was in elementary school. All the kids were checked out individually in the nurse's office, and I don't remember thinking it was any big deal. Monitoring kids' health CAN be done tactfully, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be, unfortunately.

Rachel

"Childhood anorexia bill passed."
"Childhood stupidity bill passed."
"Childhood eugenics bill passed."
"Childhood gastric bypass bill passed."


How about this one instead:

"Elected official intelligence test bill passed."

... while they are taking weights they can administer the flu shot.

I remember the polio vaccine laced sugar cubes when I was a boy

I don't have a problem with obtaining a height and weight privately, if that is what they do. But BMI can be inaccurate even in kiddos.

I have a problem with it. What business is it of the government's? Or the school's? And I have absolutely no faith in school officials or nurses being any more empathetic or supportive of the obese than the general public is. These kids might not get their weights yelled out in front of their classmates, but I guarantee you more than a few of them will get called names, given lectures and ridiculed by the adults while they are being weighed. And being children, they'll have to sit and take it, after all, it's for their own good, right?

It seems like most parents would be smart enough to know if their kids are overweight by just appearance without having to be school-educated on the matter. Whether PE coaches should "do something" about fat kids suggests the untrue idea but often believed idea people are fat due to lack of exercise. If that weren't true I'd be thin with all the exercise I get. I have no problem with kids getting useful exercise in PE so long as it's EVERYONE, not fat kids being singled out for more. Also, what good is pointing out people have a situation (fat) without any reasonable suggestion on what to actually DO about it? They'd probably give poor nutrition advice (low-fat, high carb junk) instead of something useful (cut the carbs to keep insulin and fat storage down).

They began doing that down here. I don't remember hearing anything about it. Probably snuck in on the back of something else. Anyway, my nephew got one of these letters, but he's not overweight. They had his height wrong, and he said they refused to remeasure him. (He says they have him as 5' and he's at least 5'9" or 10", as he is taller than me. He is 16). He also said a girl in his school is now being treated for anorexia after she got one of these letters.

Personally, I don't think the school should take care of this. (Especially if there is no patient/"doctor" confidence. I think that "should" be a given.) If anything, require that the student has an annual physical, and produce that when school is back in. I have to fill out all the forms again anyway. And seeing what happened with my nephew, I'm not sure all of these people are qualified (mentally ) anyway. Their function is education. And I would say that even though exercise is not always the answer, it seems to me that there are a lot more overweight kids around since they took it out of the curriculum. After all, that's not an academic item.

It would also help immensely if they didn't serve pizza and chicken nuggets. Not to mention that many of these things aren't even meat. They are vegetarian hamburgers. And there's a lot of soy. I personally think they do it to get more kids to buy lunch. It's another revenue. They rarely served stuff like that when I was in school. I think we used to get that kind of stuff right before a longish (week) holiday. But, it was homemade. (my mom worked in the school cafeteria when I was in elementary school)

They do serve salads, but my daughter says that sometimes they are gone and sometimes they are nasty. So, sometimes, she doesn't eat. (Yes, I've got salad stuff at home she could take, but the temperature isn't right by the time she eats lunch. It's not like they provide the students with a refrigerator and microwave . Too bad.

I think this is a bad idea. Even if the weights are private kids will speculate and tease. That is kids. Why don't they instead give all schools their hours of gym back and clean up the awful school lunch menu. The school lunch menus today are all fast food and starch. Get rid of the soda and junk food machines. Get rid of the candy in the school store. Ban the use of personal video games at recess.
Just my opinion.

What you would all find the most educational related to this I bet, is reviewing the precedent regarding children who had been classified with "attention deficit disorder". A 'disorder' which after many decades of serious study has still failed to find a single physiological evidence and is classified entirely behaviorially, despite quite a few studies demonstrating how merely differently classifying children caused school teachers and playground supervisors to also differently label them.

When a child is marked officially ADD, the school gets extra money for them as a special needs child of a sort. But the school actually does not have to DO anything for this extra money; they don't provide extra classes or extra physical time or anything else in return. They only get this money, however, if the parents will agree to medicate the child. This not only led to what is probably the most massive overmedication of humans, let alone children, in the history of man, but eventually to a situation where schools *depend* on the massive extra money they end up with when a substantial portion of the children are classified to obtain it for them.

This in turn led to a huge emphasis on getting kids classified this way, on schools recommending doctors they could trust to provide parents firm medicating recommendations, and more.

This page is worth reading. It is merely a collection of blurbs from from various internet sites but I think if you get to the end of it you will realize just how staggering the implications are for anything. http://tinyurl.com/cr0e

When money is involved, you *create incentive* for problems to be "found", for "indefinite treatment" (rather than resolution), etc.

Now what if the lowfat obsessed government decided eventually to prescribe "fat blocking" pills? Etc.? We know what that would do to health, as well as to the physical misery of the kid. The list could go on.

PJ

All the schools in my area claim they don't have enough time for teaching. So it seems a little odd to be adding on their responsibilities, instead of letting them teach the academic courses...

I agree with you and Val. I am definately against too much government meddling. Although I do appreciate people taking the children's welfare into consideration, it is once again an empty gesture.

Clean up the lunches, get the kids moving, ban the soda and candy machines.

I too remember vision, hearing, and lice tests, but not ever being weighed in.

Also, dont kids normally have annual physical exams with their physicians? The info is reported to parents then, right? So how is making kids being weighed in at school making a difference? I think, if parents care, they take the kids to all the physicals, and pay attention to the info.

If they dont care at the physical, they arent going to care about the school weigh in.

Poor families don't have the money for this -- particularly those with incomes just above Medicaid level but who do not have insurance. I never had annual physicals, and it wasn't because my parents didn't care.

This sort of legislation assumes parents don't care. Let's assume that in at least half the cases, they *do* care. What are those parents going to do?

Well, they are going to follow dietary recommendations, and send their kids off to schools that serve the worst sort of diet. To schools without PE programs and without even recess where they can run and play. Any progress a parent might make following the current dietary recommendations -- without going into how good or bad they are -- is going to be undone by the schools.

I don't believe parents are any dumber or less caring than they were 40 years ago, and that is the underlying assumption of this type of legislation.

Oh dear. I wasnt meaning that parents dont care if they dont take their kids to the docs. Sorry. I didnt think of the cost of these physicals, since I never had worry about insurance coverage. Only for a few years in my twenties did I go without...as a child/teen I was always covered by parents insurance.