Should schools give BMI index scorecards for their overweight students?

No

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by Heinz Sladek

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According to recent government funded study, the entire population of the United States of America quite possibly could be overweight by the year 2048. This is based on trends from the past 30 years. So, where is the problem? Is weight management yet another responsibility of our schools, is it a more federal issue, or is it an individual issue that should be dealt with at home? Schools have enough to deal with and to report on without having to send a BMI index scorecard home to parents with overweight children.

As with adults, children are having more issues with obesity at a younger age. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) two factors that contribute to obesity are behavior and genetics. With behavior, it is about what people eat and how much physical activity they participate in on a daily basis. With genetics, unfortunately genes can influence the way a person stores and burns fat. According to CDC data for 2003-2004, approximately 17 percent of children and adolescents within the United States of America were overweight, and that number has continued to grow each year, with an estimate of one in three children being overweight today.

So where should the issue be addressed at home or at school? In order for it to be addressed successfully, where children are able to maintain a healthy weight, the issue needs to be addressed in both the home and the school environment. Currently, school lunches are federally regulated. Schools are required to meet very specific nutrition requirements and stay within the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Schools must provide lunches that meet one-third of the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, and calcium. Furthermore, the lunches must provide a sufficient amount of calories. Though schools must meet these requirements, they are in control of the menu planning and the meals being provided to students. Now, if you have ever seen some of the lunches being served to students, one would question the nutritional value of what is being served. If children will not eat the food, they are neither getting the appropriate recommended nutrition, nor are their stomachs being filled, so they are going to have the tendency to eat snacks that are not as nutritionally balanced once they leave school.

Physical education programs are being diminished annually as a requirement at school, as a result of the government placing more academic regulations, especially when schools are being held accountable through "high-stakes testing." Some states have mandatory physical education curriculum standards, along with mandatory amounts of time designated per week for students to participate in physical education, but there are some states that do not require physical education at all. Overall, the most states are requiring is physical education at the elementary school level for approximately 150 minutes per week, in middle school students can be required to take up to 225 minutes per week, and in high school once a students receives the required credits for physical education, which is usually no more than two academic years, they are finished.

Now, schools are also being forced to add another report card to an already saturated accountability system. Students in some schools are receiving a Body Mass Index (BMI) report card. As if bringing your report card home is not hard enough for some students, they are now forced to bring a report card home telling their parents if they are fat. The only thing that the BMI report is doing is presenting the problem to parents. Is it solving the problem? No. In fact, many of these children who are overweight have parents who are also overweight. So, if mom and dad are not taking care of their own problem, what makes anyone think that a BMI report card is going to make a difference in a child's weight management?

This is where we begin to address whether all this concentration on obesity is an issue that belongs in school. Obesity is epidemic and must be addressed in both the home and the school in order for effective weight management to take place. Beginning with student nutrition, schools can go so far as to offer parents programs where they learn the basics of good nutrition, including grocery shopping and meal preparation but, schools cannot force parents to attend these meetings. There are extenuating circumstances including dealing with parent availability, and parent interest. Unless these types of programs are made mandatory, schools are not going to be able to reach all those who need to be reached. In school, lunch menus do need to be evaluated. This is not to say that all schools are not providing what they should to students in the way of menu choices, but when you look at the end of lunch at what is in the trash can, you can quickly determine if a meal is being eaten or not, or whether or not that menu choice should be changed. Physical education must be part of the daily schedule in elementary schools and required in all secondary schools. Nutrition should also be a part of the curriculum being taught. If children are provided the opportunities to make healthy choices and snacks, many of them will do this. Physical education needs to be structured with the curriculum including proper stretching and cardio activities that are taught as part of a healthy body program. Forget the BMI reports, the only thing they accomplish is making an already insecure and sensitive group of kids more insecure or, better yet, making a group of kids who did not otherwise think of themselves as fat to begin having a poor body image. Children must be taught self esteem and this begins with encouraging healthy choices in food, and in physical activity.

Schools do not have control over what goes on at home. There is only so much that they can do. Schools need to be providing healthy choices, encouraging health body images in students, and providing a true education in physical education. From there, the student's weight becomes a part of his or her home life. Let's not send the wrong message to students, by encouraging poor body images in the school environment. Schools must get away from a concentration on who is obese and who is not, and encourage healthy living. The rest is up to the student and his or her family. Unless society is prepared to take on the responsibility of raising children from the time they are born, and taking the parenting out of the picture completely, then the responsibility must ultimately fall on the shoulders of those who raise the children. We are not living in this type of society, and I hope that we never do. Schools must continue to support healthy living, but the rest must be up to the students and his or her family. Schools need to forget the BMI report and focus on education.

Resources:
http://www.cdc.gov/n ccdphp/dnp a/obesity/faq.htm#fa ctors
http://kidsheal th.org/parent/g eneral/body/overweig ht_obesity .html
http://www.isbe .net/nutrition/ htmls/national_schoo l_lunch_qa .htm
http://www.ncsl. org/programs/h ealth/perequirement. htm

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