Well it is nice to see that the Nanny Staters are keeping so busy and being so worried. Now the big thing is fat kids. There are so many fat kids out there that the state has to intervene and tell parents what to do.
Proposed legislation would require schools to test students for diabetes. Another would require school officials to report a child’s body mass index, or BMI, to his or her parent. The body mass index can be used to indicate if a person is overweight. It’s determined by a formula based on height, weight and age.
I bet most parents don’t need a note home to let them know if their kid is over/underweight. And the solution is pretty straightforward: more activity (i.e. less television, less video games) and less junk food.
But the question is, is it the government’s responsibility to displace parents on this issue? Your kid is overweight so you must follow government dictates?
“It’s to the benefit of everybody, everyone for government to find a role to intervene when other folks are not willing to do the right thing,” Ortiz said. “What we’re doing here as government is to tell people to make choices.”
That last part is patently untrue; in fact I’d say it is an outright bald faced lie. It isn’t about “making choices” since there is only one action that is deemed acceptable. If, for example, a parent looks at the note and tosses it in the trash and does nothing, Felix Ortiz would not find that acceptable.
An additional problem is that for those parents as well as adults who don’t have kids who do make sure their kid is healthy this would amount to more money coming out of their pockets. Some parents are unconcerned about their children’s weight, so people who have no kids or who make sure their kids get plenty of exercise have to pay for this decision?
Further, there are likely to be other idiotic things like the regulation of school lunch portion size (I know that article is about restuarants, but this kind of Nanny Statism tends to expand rather quickly so it would be only a matter of time before school lunches were impacted, IMO). This is completely moronic. My son, who buys the school lunch, has recently started taking a lunch as well. Why? Because the protions with the hot lunch are no longer sufficient. My son is extremely active for an 8 year old.1
Here is an idea: A fat tax…no seriously. The fat tax is an adjunct to the income tax. Not only do you report your income, deductions, etc., but also your BMI. If you’re too fat your taxes are increased. If your kids are too fat, your taxes are increased. At least this way, we’d go after the chubbos and those who aren’t overweight don’t have to pay for those who pack on the pounds.
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1He swims 5-6 times a week for 1 to 1.5 hours, and this isn’t play swimming either, it is training. At the last fund raiser he swam over 100 laps (short course yards) in one hour. So as one might expect, his caloric intake is probably astronomical compared to most kids his age.
