AWARENESS UPDATE

This may not simply be a submission from the Awareness Dept; this may also fall under my I-Just-Thought-This-Was-Interesting Dept.  But anyway...some of you actually might disagree with me on this.  But see the article below--I am glad the mom in question complained, and that this school is coming under fire.  Don't get me wrong--of course we need to beware of childhood obesity and try to be healthier.  But I think the below comes from our too-often appearance-centric, body-centric, "beauty"-centric culture, and there needs to be pushback against it.  See if you agree:

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A Missouri mother is livid after her daughter came home from elementary school with a note saying that her body mass index was too high despite her lean frame.

"She goes, 'Does this mean I'm fat?' and I said, 'No, this does not mean you are fat,'" Amanda Moss, of Belton, Missouri, told KMBC, ABC's Kansas City affiliate.

Moss's daughter Kylee is 7 years old, 54 pounds, 3-foot-10, Moss told the station.

According to the BMI calculator on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website, her BMI is 17.9, making her overweight. But Moss says Kylee is an active, thin second grader.

"She is tiny," Moss told KMBC. "She has no body fat at all."

The school calculated students body mass indexes, which are a measurement of height, weight and age, as part of a grant program, Belton School District Superintendent Andrew Underwood told ABC News. In the future, he said parents will be allowed to opt out.

"We do the body mass index on our students for positive reasons to try to promote healthy habits as far as what the kids eat and their activity," Underwood said. "There was no malicious intent by this."

BMI is a controversial measurement because it does not distinguish muscle mass from fat mass, said Dr. Naveen Uli, a pediatric endocrinology at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Uli has not treated Kylee.

Knowing the average BMI for a student population can be helpful because it helps administrators changes when they increase physical activity time or add healthier options to the cafeteria menu, but it may not be as helpful on an individual scale, Uli said.

"[I]t may in fact be psychological[ly punishing, since school personnel may not be familiar with details regarding that child's health," he said in an email to ABC News. "This is best addressed by that child's healthcare provider. That being said, if the school is in a neighborhood with limited access to healthcare, the child might not be seeing a pediatrician regularly. In that scenario, the school report to the child's parents on BMI might be a much needed wake-up call."

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