[Solved] Sporty girl from Poole is overweight, says NHS

What a joke. Apparently after calculating her body mass index she missed out on being placed in the healthy category by just one percentile point - hardly warrants all the fuss, especially as she is an active child who is always on the go. She does ballet, cheerleading and spends lots of time walking and playing outdoors. No wonder so many youngsters have weight and image issues.

Do people "pop" unreality pills when they walk into the office, do some calculations, and print out letters???? 🙄

What was even funnier / stranger was that boss did not even apologise for sending the letter, but apologised for causing concern...

I actually think the sending of the letters etc is a good thing. It does though require the recipient (parents) to be able to look at their child and the information in the letter and have some discretion. 1% over is nothing really and maybe should just have been junked but with a nod to ensuring that they continue to eat healthy.

We got one of those letters last year for our son, who I would not describe as overweight. My wife though had been telling me for about 3 weeks before the letter came that he was starting to get podgy. He was eating saugages a lot for dinner and we had got into the habit some how of giving him a doner and chips every Friday evening and other things. When the letter came it stated he was about the 1 - 2 % over and this did make me sit up and reflect, "Ok he is not over weight but I should probably cut down on the regular junk intake that he was into". The whole issue is about parents ensuring a healthy balance of food as many do use fast food as an easy way, as we did.

What do you all think? If food education is done early enough, at the age of 5 and upwards will it have a positive effect in the future or further stigmatise overweight kids/people?

spence

This is ludicrous. If you look at BMI calculators, they usually say that if you do a lot of exercise, then it can distort the result, so a very active child presumably has a higher BMI than average. If they are thinking of sending letters, then they shouldn't just base it on BMI, I would have thought that the person who took the measurements could make a judgement call on the spot as an additional piece of information to record.

Although the bmi calculators that are used are not the standard ones, it has to be shifted for children. I actually believe that what they are trying to do is the right thing by educating about food and reminding about weight.
One story will be this girl which on the face of it is ridicoulous and the next will be (I think it was in the same week) teens being given gastic band surgery to help them lose weight.
I really do think the education they are doing on food and weight is a good thing. Some will always take it out of proportion or context like this girls parent but that should then be parental judgement at that point. The parent cannot claim they did not know if their child does end up obese.

It does raise passions though and probably a good thing, gets us all talking and thinking about it 🙂 😉

Yep, when you put it that way, I agree completely.