Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Malkin: The Data-Mining Body Monitors in Our Schools
Creators Syndicate ^ | May 30, 2014 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 05/29/2014 6:51:49 PM PDT by jazusamo

Like millions of other American parents, my husband and I received a warning letter from the BMI police last week. Our active, healthy 8th-grade daughter is "very lean," according to her school-administered "Fitnessgram." The national student body monitors think this is a public health problem.

The obesity report card lectured that because our daughter's body-mass index is "very low," we "should make certain" that she "is eating a healthy diet that includes the appropriate number of calories." Thanks, geniuses. We had no idea such measurements were taking place, and we wondered whether we were alone in objecting to this unsolicited Nanny State dispatch. We're not.

In New York, mom Laura Williams blew the whistle on how her perfectly healthy daughter Gwendolyn was branded "overweight" by her Fitnessgram. City schools sent the reports home to nearly 900,000 students in their backpacks. Gwendolyn showed the assessment to the New York Post last week, exclaiming: "I'm 4-foot-1, and 66 pounds, and I'm like, what?!"

Thanks to the Williams family's whistleblowing and a huge public backlash, Big Apple schools will now change the way the fitness reports are distributed to families. But changing the delivery route doesn't address the expansive government encroachment on our children's health based on dubious science.

Gwendolyn's absurd classification exposes the unreliability of BMI ratings, which many public health scientists admit are inadequate health predictors. The Centers for Disease Control itself says that "the accuracy of BMI varies substantially according to the individual child's degree of body fatness" and doesn't distinguish between "excess fat, muscle or bone mass, nor does it provide any indication of the distribution of fat among individuals."

(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: bmi; bodymassindex; childobesity; fitnessgrams; malkin; publicschools

1 posted on 05/29/2014 6:51:49 PM PDT by jazusamo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

When I was a kid we used to the following in our school cafeteria:

Corn Bread
Navy Beans cooked with pork fat
Fried Potatoes
Sweet Corn
A Huge piece of cake cooked with lard

On some days we’d get some kind of meat, usually fried.

And twice a day we’d get a half pint of whole milk. Drinking it through a straw seemed to make it taste better. In fact, I think I’ll get me a glass and drink it through a straw right now!


2 posted on 05/29/2014 6:57:02 PM PDT by VerySadAmerican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

Nothing new here. In the 1960s in government schools in Maryland they were weighing us in front of everyone and sending the report home. I was overweight as a child and it was embarrassing. They did more harm to me than good.


3 posted on 05/29/2014 6:59:03 PM PDT by Wage Slave
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: VerySadAmerican; Wage Slave

Yep, late 40s and 50s in CA same here and there were few overweight kids.


4 posted on 05/29/2014 7:05:48 PM PDT by jazusamo (Sometimes I think that this is an era when sanity has become controversial: Thomas Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

When it comes to fitness and nutrition, the government is every bit as good as it is in every other thing having to with health: terrible. Salt doesn’t cause high blood pressure, fat doesn’t make you fat, the food pyramid coincides with the obesity epidemic, and you can’t possible “burn off” all the carbs they say you should eat through the lie called “cardio”. Their entire agenda is to stop you from eating meat and other animal products.


5 posted on 05/29/2014 7:12:25 PM PDT by cdcdawg (Be seeing you...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

First of all, at recess we were made to go outside and do physical things. Usually without any supervision. We burned the calories we ate.


6 posted on 05/29/2014 7:15:01 PM PDT by VerySadAmerican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo
late 40s and 50s in CA same here and there were few overweight kids.

I went to school during the same time period and we'd never heard of a school cafeteria. Our Moms (mine was a single working Mom) packed our brown-bag lunches daily. I remember Sockeye salmon sandwiches (the canned was cheap then), tuna, peanut butter & jelly, always with an apple or orange for "dessert." We had fat kids and thin kids and in-between kids but in those days we realized body types differ a lot based on genetics. This whole "obesity" binge is just more meddling from Lefties who want to run everyone's lives.

7 posted on 05/29/2014 7:20:07 PM PDT by Bernard Marx
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

Interestingly, my children both went to public elementary school in a very upscale district. There simply are NO fat kids. The moms are either stay at home, or only work part time. They either cook meals, or buy take out from pretty nice places. Mostly, they still cook supper. If they are all like mine, they eat a lot, but they aren’t allowed to consume nothing but crap all day and night. It makes all the difference.


8 posted on 05/29/2014 7:26:20 PM PDT by cdcdawg (Be seeing you...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

What a terrible world we live in. Our children are in peril because they are well-fed, and warm, sunny days are proof we’ve wrecked the Earth.

So glad the leftists are there to save us.


9 posted on 05/29/2014 7:28:42 PM PDT by itzmygun (Elitism + hatred of mankind = LIBERALISM)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

Write them back a letter and tell them “Well, at least she knows when to mind her own business!”


10 posted on 05/29/2014 7:32:50 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Wage Slave

In the 70’s, I remember the scoliosis checks. They would show pictures of people with horribly misshapen spines, diagnosed as scoliosis, then make all of us girls (boys separately) take our shirts off and bend at the waste to be examined by the “expert”. Some got the dreaded diagnosis, for which there was no remedy. Humiliating. Upsetting.


11 posted on 05/29/2014 7:48:08 PM PDT by kdot
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: kdot

They’ve since discovered that the ‘experts’ were sometimes pedophiles and the pictures they took were circulated amongst other pedos.


12 posted on 05/29/2014 7:51:20 PM PDT by Black Agnes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Bernard Marx

We brown bagged a lot in grammar school. I don’t recall teachers or other school officials saying anything to the few overweight kids but they were out there at recess and PE classes with the rest of us.


13 posted on 05/29/2014 7:53:45 PM PDT by jazusamo (Sometimes I think that this is an era when sanity has become controversial: Thomas Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

Please bump the Freepathon or click above to donate or become a monthly donor!

14 posted on 05/29/2014 7:56:29 PM PDT by jazusamo (Sometimes I think that this is an era when sanity has become controversial: Thomas Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: VerySadAmerican
...at recess we were made to go outside and do physical things.

And I'll wager dollars to donuts that you played on jungle gyms, wrestled and tussled, pointed fingers and yelled "bang, bang, you're dead!", threw dodge balls at each other, played Red Rover, Red Rover, and chased each other around. It's a miracle you're alive today, VSA. Truly a miracle.

15 posted on 05/29/2014 8:51:20 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

I call Libs the “New Puritans.” They want to dictate every aspect of everyone’s lives even though their views on sex and perversion are 180-degrees from the original Puritans. The main thing the two have in common is the need for top-down control of the behavior of others. Totalitarianism seems to be built into the Statist impulse.


16 posted on 05/29/2014 10:57:00 PM PDT by Bernard Marx
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: VerySadAmerican

I think it only tasted better because of the paper straws. ;-) Ya can’t get those any more.


17 posted on 05/30/2014 10:11:53 AM PDT by rhoda_penmark
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: jazusamo

The left wants to have proper body mass index subjects with plenty of time on their hands to find themselves and become artists. Artists tend to vote leftist.

They also want everyone to not smoke so they are better employees, I guess, in case the US ever becomes an economic powerhouse again, you know, with jobs and such.

So, eventually, our society consists of “healthy” dole collecting subjects that consider waking, eating, going to the bathroom and procreating to be “work”.


18 posted on 05/31/2014 8:18:41 AM PDT by Blue Collar Christian (Vote Democrat. Once you're OK with killing babies the rest is easy. <BCC><)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson