Obesity Screening For Kids Faces Opposition

Parents can often be very sensitive to the weight of their children

The argument about whether children should be weighed and measured to record their Body Mass Indexes at schools is raging in New Hampshire in America and has been recently brought to the public attention after the wife of the governor said that she would back legislation that would mean all schools would be required by law to document children’s Body Mass Indexes every three years.

A similar argument broke out in the United Kingdom a couple of years back when the Health Minister instigated new plans at schools to do the same. The opposition to this recording of BMI is that children will feel sidelined and ostracised if they do not fit into the healthy BMI bracket and that they could even be bullied and teased when they are seen to go in for weighing. Some opponents even said that the weighing and measuring could cause eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.

At Ukmedix News we have seen that the best way to go about the weighing and measuring of children is to be extremely sensitive to their feelings and to make them understand that their weight problem is a health issue which needs to be addressed. Another problem which is often faced is that parents of the children are the most vehement opposers of the weighing policy because they feel that they are being somehow blamed for the fact that their children are overweight or obese. Parents can often be as sensitive to the weight of their children as the children themselves if not more.

At Ukmedix News we believe that parent should be notified if their children are unhealthy and given advice on healthy eating plans. If children remain overweight or obese until they are teenagers they are likely to stay that way for the rest of their lives because eating habits formed in their youth are extremely difficult to break.

School weighing plans are also effective so that governments can know which areas are the most affected by obesity which is often linked to poverty and low socioeconomic status. Governments could use data to initiate funding plans to help unhealthy areas.