sometimes it was necessary to be cruel in order to be kind.

The news in the world of weight loss and obesity is that health officials of the British government have said that the word “obese” should not be used when describing children. A new government initiative which will inform parents of the weight and height of their children when they get to the age of five and also at eleven will not be allowed to categorise them as being obese.

UK health officials defended the ban on the word obese by saying that research had shown that parents would not react positively to the word and therefore were less likely to do something about their children’s weight problem when their children were described as obese. Instead of using the word obese, the obese children will be classed as “very overweight”. Four different categories will be used to describe children’s weight and they are underweight, healthy weight, overweight and very overweight.

Dr William Cavendish who is the head of  Health and Wellbeing at the Department of Health explained that the word obese had not actually been banned but after consulting with a number of experts they had purely chosen not to use the word in order to maximise the impact of telling parents that their children had a weight problem.

But not everybody agrees that the word obese should be banned and Ms Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum said that in America the word obese was deemed essential to describe children as it would shock parents into action. She explained that it was a “nasty” word but sometimes it was necessary to be cruel in order to be kind.

There has been a surprising amount of opposition to this government initiative to weigh children and many opponents said that it would only increase bullying and stigmatise children. For this reason the government has allowed parents to opt out of the measuring and weighing of their children and the results will not be given to the children themselves but sent directly to the parents.