Only in NY – School hands 66 lb girl note saying she’s fat

Hotair ^ | 05/24/2014 | Jazz Shaw

[SeekAndFind]

Tales from the Nanny State continue to the amazement of nobody, I’m sure. In a story coming from (where else…) New York City, the wise school officials, ever concerned about the health and future of their students, decided to check out what each of the kids weighs, matching the results against some Body Mass Index chart. Upon noting that many of the children failed to pass muster, they decided to inform the parents… by handing the kids notes to take home. What could possibly go wrong?

A New York City mom was fit to be tied Wednesday after her 4-foot-1, 66-pound daughter came home from school with a note calling her fat.

Eight-year-old Gwendolyn Williams is anything but fat, but her mom worries that the school’s note, citing her body mass index, has left her daughter confused about her body.

“My daughter is thin; she knows she doesn’t have a weight problem, but that night, I caught her grabbing the skin near her waist, and she asked me, ‘is this what they were talking about?”‘ Laura Bruiji Williams, the girl’s mom, told FoxNews.com. “It was awful to see.”

Gwendolyn, along with her classmates, were handed a “Fitnessgram” sealed with a sticker at her public school in Brooklyn. The class was told not to open the letters, issued by the New York City Department of Education, but like most of her friends, she couldn’t resist and read it.

Who could have possibly predicted that a group of curious pre-teens, having been handed mysterious notes for their parents carrying instructions not to open them, would go ahead and open them anyway? Probably anyone with any experience whatsoever with children and one half the common sense that God gave a goat. But not in this school!

But perhaps more disturbing is the idea that an eight year old who weighs in at 66 pounds was somehow off the bell curve on the fat end. Are they just trying to encourage bulimia in the next generation? Does this girl really look fat to you?

Welcome to New York. And with that greeting out of the way, flee as you value your lives. This place is a lost cause.

[SeekAndFind]

This is now considered fat?

[GeronL]

According to BMI the NBA is full of morbidly obese players

[Aevery_Freeman]

But this is the epitome of svelte feminine beauty!

Can I have two yeses and a big fat NO!

[Flick Lives]

If anything, the kid looks thin. Actually, totally normal. What is abnormal are these busybody public schools with their noses in everything.

[Gay State Conservative]

Being even somewhat overweight can,in fact,cause serious problems...in adults at least.It happened to me.Medical research either has,or has not,convincingly established that a particular BMI in a child or adolescent can cause problems.Assuming that that *has* been established then it's up to the kid's doctor to address the problem...not the school system.

And to my eyes that girl doesn't look at all overweight.

[vbmoneyspender]

Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

4. It gets the logic wrong.

The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.

5. It's bad statistics.

Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.

6. It is lying by scientific authority.

Because the BMI is a single number between 1 and 100 (like a percentage) that comes from a mathematical formula, it carries an air of scientific authority. But it is mathematical snake oil.

7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.

That's total nonsense.

8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.

Insurance companies sometimes charge higher premiums for people with a high BMI. Among such people are all those fit individuals with good bone and muscle and little fat, who will live long, healthy lives during which they will have to pay those greater premiums.

9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don't feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.

Those alternatives cost a little bit more, but they give far more reliable results.

10. It embarrasses the U.S.

It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then.

[JRandomFreeper]

The grandfather in me would be encouraging the child to eat, and making plenty of treats that the kid likes. She ain't fat.

/johnny

[Conspiracy Guy]

What a Porker. she needs to get down to at least 60 lb. All kids are fat so everyone gets a note, and everyone passes and everyone gets a trophy.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Looks like a “large boned” lass to me. Way to go folks, want to nudge some nervous nellies into anorexia nervosa?

[jodster36]

She looks like how a normal, healthy 8 year old should look. Its so sad and scary that government run schools are classifying her and others fat. My 8 ½ year old daughter would be considered obese at 4’ 7” and 72 pounds by their standards. She is tall, thin and muscles are toned from 4+ years of ballet.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Childhood weight might or might not project adult weight either. Depending on my age I was either chubby or beanpole, rib-showing skinny. Now I fight the battle of the bulge big time, and nobody could have known.

Some say that as an adult, up to 40 lb. over “chart normal” is not a health problem. A vanity problem it could be.

[factoryrat]

The BMI is a totally completely useless metric in regards to a healthy weight/height/build. The powers to be want to put everyone either on a starvation diet, or fatten up people to the point where they can't fight back without having a heart attack. The agri-corps and food processors are behind a lot of this.

[Yorlik803]

and Somolia is fat central.

[DPMD]

Let’s put these teachers topless on a runway and see what they look like before allowing them to pass judgment.

[Kirkwood]

The problem here is that she is too tall for her age. She needs to start smoking to stunt her growth.

[TalBlack]

In1969/70 in 6th grade I was 5’ 100lbs. I was by no stretch of the imagination fat. Today I would probably be in counseling.

[ExCTCitizen]

Jeez, if she is overweight, I'd hate to see what Clay Matthews or Aaron Rogers would be...

Overweight my ass...

[Jack Hydrazine]

“Fat”
by Weird Al
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2mU6USTBRE

[Jack Hydrazine]

The Six Levels of Fatness
by comedian Gabriel Iglesias
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5qM5kX2_C0

1. Big
2. Healthy
3. Husky
4. Fluffy
5. Damn!
6. Oh hell no!!!!!

Which one is she?

[bgill]

When will parents take back the schools? They are the tax payers. They vote for the school board. They are the classroom moms and volunteers. They are the parents of the students. Sorry, if parents continue to allow schools to run roughshod over them, they have no one to blame but themselves.