I advocate giving kids chocolate bars for being slim

Or, better yet, grade PE based upon actual physical fitness.

Fatties get the F.
Anorexics get the A.
Bulimics get the B.

And so on.

Of course, if you want kids to get better grades, stop encouraging kids to pick on the "smart ones".

Honestly, in most of these cases, the parents are to blame for not encouraging healthy eating for their kids.

As for exercise, if you are a fat kid, that means that even if you WANT to get into sports, you're not going to get picked and if you try to get active, you'll likely get laughed at. It makes it very difficult.

Schools should have classes on nutrition and well being and parents should be more involved in their child's health.

/former fat kid
//lost it all when I got my shiat together as an adult

Good idea on providing incentive to stay in shape. Not sure if grades are the most effective incentive, but whatever works for them.

Raises a question I've had for a while: If we're going to require "Phys Ed" as a class in schools, why don't we treat is as a _real_ class. ie, separate students according to ability, set goals, and give grades. If we can do that for intellectual performance, why not physical?

What's that? An hour every other day may not be enough to have an impact? Ok, so they might have to do "homework"!

/Get running, fatty.
//Get reading, jock.
///Get off my lawn, all of you.

Part of the problem is that kids don't play outside anymore. When I was growing up, I would leave the house during summer at daybreak and not come back until dinner. These days, people are worried about John Q. ChildRapist or being called an irresponsible parent.

The solution, of course, is a "Lord of the Flies" style island where you can dump your kids every summer. Let them figure it out.

plcow: Good idea on providing incentive to stay in shape. Not sure if grades are the most effective incentive, but whatever works for them.

And it teaches them a valuable lesson: It's more important to look good than to be smart and work hard.

/wish I was kidding

Well, this is a pants shiattingly retarded idea. We don't add touchdowns for being able to correctly answer calculus problems, you don't give better grades for knowledge tests based on BMI.

Lsherm: art of the problem is that kids don't play outside anymore. When I was growing up, I would leave the house during summer at daybreak and not come back until dinner. These days, people are worried about John Q. ChildRapist or being called an irresponsible parent.

The solution, of course, is a "Lord of the Flies" style island where you can dump your kids every summer. Let them figure it out.

I agree -- parents are being scared shiatless by the news and as a result are overprotective of their kids. They keep their kids indoors and it's easy to just sit them in front of the TV and put an XBox controller in their hands to keep them quiet.

But even if parents did let their kids out often, there's still the nutrition issue. If the parents aren't taking the time to make healthy meals and filling their kids with McDonands and KFC, then the exercise will not be enough to burn off the excess calories and little Timmy is still as wide as he is tall.

TravisBickle62: I advocate giving kids chocolate bars for being slim

And a liter of Coke.
Faygo is an acceptable substitute.

The food we eat nowadays (in general) is bad/poison for us. It is much easier for working parents to get take out or heat up a pre-packaged meal (full of fat, salt, etc).

And as a person who has struggled with her weight her whole life, as a kid, the grade thing would not have been an incentive for me to lose weight. You have to find what motivates you personally.

How about schools employ people trained in nutrition and fitness, and drop the old 'physical education' approach which generally is a paying position for a football coach to loaf in for the remainder of the year after football season.

(BMI) of between 18 and 25.

That's hilarious also for girls/boys like me which have the figure and metabolism of a child until their mid-twenties.

BMI between 16.5-17.5, in those days, ate many sandwiches, was still 90 pounds soking wet.

People are morons and assholes. Weight is not solely determined by a person's virtue.

personally, i think school should be for learning and education, period. i don't think they should even have a "physical education" class. kids in the united states are falling behind every other country in math and science, and yet they're spending time in school playing basketball or running laps?

I say this nutritionalist needs to be kicked in the funnies and stop thinking he knows what's right for government policy.

I'd be furious to know some brain-dead doofus made it to college for being fit while I ended up being denied because I enjoy foods that have flavor and video games. That already happens with athletic scholarships... though at least now they make the attempt to be fair by requiring passing grades. If only we could prevent instructors from giving those passing grades away because the student's a 'star athlete' and nothing more.

Sports in schools should be purely extracurricular.

enderthexenocide: n't think they should even have a "physical education" class. kids in the united states are falling behind every other country in math and science, and yet they're spending time in school playing basketball or running laps

LOL what? you serious?

Do we *really* have a childhood obesity problem in this country? I have grade school aged kids and I don't see a bunch of fat kids at school functions. Yeah there is the token fat kid in every class, but the rest of them are normal skinny little kids. I know anecdotal evidence can be misleading, but it makes me wonder if this childhood obesity problem is a) concentrated in certain areas/demographics, b) BS.

//the adult obesity problem I totally buy.

Lsherm:
The solution, of course, is a "Lord of the Flies" style island where you can dump your kids every summer. Let them figure it out.

They did figure out a way to get rid of fatties.

Hrm. IIRC, and I may not, obesity -at least in the US- increases as income decreases. Grades also are poorer as poverty increases. Well, a negative times a negative is a potato after all, right?

Sounds like it's a great idea!

If it works, perhaps we can then combat ugliness by giving better marks to attractive children too.

Soon, chubby, ugly genius children will be failed out of school and will be forced to work fast-food McJobs instead of developing scientific breakthroughs that benefit society.

We can then leave those breakthrough scientific developments to athletic jocks and overdeveloped cheerleaders who had the foresight to be born with "pretty genes" and who chose to work out and socialize for 3 hours a day as opposed to studying 3 hours a day.

What a world we will then have!

I, for one, welcome and salute the new thin and beautiful overlords of our Idiocracy by raising a glass of Brawndo in toast to them!

angstycoder: Hrm. IIRC, and I may not, obesity -at least in the US- increases as income decreases. Grades also are poorer as poverty increases. Well, a negative times a negative is a potato after all, right?

So in essence, we don't really need to give higher grades for being fit because wealthy, and typically fitter kids do better in school anyway.

Don't wanna be fat and dumb? Stop being poor?

006andahalf: angstycoder: Hrm. IIRC, and I may not, obesity -at least in the US- increases as income decreases. Grades also are poorer as poverty increases. Well, a negative times a negative is a potato after all, right?

So in essence, we don't really need to give higher grades for being fit because wealthy, and typically fitter kids do better in school anyway.

Don't wanna be fat and dumb? Stop being poor?

Heh, I didn't mean to say that. I meant that it seems like they are making a bad situation worse by implementing such a policy.

I got a better idea. Lets base what kids can eat off their scholarly performance. Fail that math test? Bran muffin for lunch until you do better! Ace it? You can have anything you want including soda and candy bars.

That is quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

Grades are for an education. Not weight.

/And there are SOME people (not many, but some) that are inherently huge.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: The plan calls for high school students to be allowed to take a so-called "ideal weight" option in their final year exams, the "baccalaureat," under which they would earn extra points if they kept a body mass index (BMI) of between 18 and 25.

If this exam is used for entrance into higher education, you just made it worthless.

It's already worthless, so it wouldn't change a thing.

OG.