2014-05-27

BMI Is Bull Shit But Not To New York

Imagine getting one of these letters from your school?

Does this kid look fat to you?

By this measure, we're all "fat".

We're taking this obsession with weight a little too far when the Department of Education begins to send letters of this kind.

Thankfully, so far anyway, none of this totalitarian ignorance exhibited by 'progressive' New York happens at my kid's (or any school I'm aware of here) school.

Fat-shaming,” experts called the practice on Thursday, criticizing both the fallibility of BMI calculations and the mental-health effects of kids being graded on their size.
Modal Trigger
Gwendolyn, 9, a third-grader at PS 29, at her house in Staten Island.

“My friend who was next to me, she opened hers, too, and she was overweight too, and we were both saying, ‘Did the Fitnessgrams get mixed up?’” said Gwendolyn, who plays softball and loves to ride her scooter.

“I just don’t think that it’s fair to be called overweight when you’re not really overweight!”
BMI, while supported by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was designed decades ago by the insurance industry as a way of assessing the health of groups of people, not individuals, said Chevese Turner of the Binge Eating Disorder Association.

“Dieting, especially for kids, is the gateway drug for eating disorders, and so is the public shaming that can come with this,” she said of the Fitnessgrams.

“My organization and others believe that BMI report cards have no place coming from schools and can be more harmful than helpful.”

A DOE spokeswoman defended the Fitnessgrams Thursday as “just one indicator … which helps students develop personal goals for lifelong health.”
But for Gwendolyn, the Fitnessgrams are just dumb.

“I know that I’m not overweight, so why should I believe the New York Department of Education?” she said.

You shouldn't believe a damn word they say. In fact, ignore the fuckers.

This kind of interference in private lives is getting too routine...and frightening. I hope parents make a stink.

3 comments:

  1. At 170 lbs and 5'11" tall, my BMI is 23.7. I am obviously not fat but I am out of shape and have flab (much too much flab). The BMI is as flawed as anything that only looks at weight and height and does not take activity and age factors into account. It is stupid. But, then, bureaucracies take stupidity to ever higher levels. Maybe there should be a BMI (Bureaucratic Moronic Index) for them.

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  2. BTW, the little girl's BMI is 19.3... in the lower range of "normal" according to the US NIH.

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  3. I'm 5'10 150lb and still in decent shape. They'd find fat on me too.

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