A couple of interesting articles

This article is pretty good, too bad only a few students attended. What Prof. Kirkland had to say is mostly true. The only thing I think that was worded wrong is where it says America is disillusioned about the obesity epidemic:

Kirkland suggested that society's longstanding aversion toward overweight people contributes to America's disillusion about the obesity epidemic.

It's not disillusionment (failure, dissatisfaction, or dismay) with the obesity epidemic. It's that we've been brainwashed into believing that fat is going to lead to deadly diseases that will shorten our lives. America isn't disillusioned, if we were disillusioned, the diet industry would be going broke and big pharma wouldn't have a market for all those do-nothing pills they're trying to hype for weight loss and doctors wouldn't have any fat patients waiting in line for weight loss surgery. I wish America was disillusioned with the obesity epidemic.

This makes me sorta kinda glad I live in MN. The MN House has rejected a proposal to monitor BMI in school kids. The bill is still alive in the Senate, so I'm going to be writing some emails to my representatives to let them know I think it's a crock of shit and isn't going to do a damned thing to make kids thin or healthy, all it's going to do, if it passes, is make sure kids are made to feel bad about their bodies and maybe send them over the dieting edge into a full-blown eating disorder.

A common objection was that the measurements could embarrass overweight children, and facilitate eating disorders, emotional eating or other body image issues.
Kathy Kater is a psychotherapist specializing in children and weight. "Unhappiness about weight is a catalyst for disordered eating, weight gain and poorer overall health. Worry about weight, it turns out, is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Now, if only the bill's sponsor, Rep. Diane Loeffler of Minneapolis, could get that through her head, instead of this:

the obesity epidemic is really threatening the life of Minnesota youth. The body-mass measurements would have been collected and used to fight childhood obesity, not to monitor individuals or make the numbers public in the school.

How in the hell are you going to collect those numbers without making the kids feel bad about themselves? Kids aren't stupid, they know what those numbers mean. And WTF, how do you propose fighting childhood obesity without monitoring those fat kids? How fucking stupid do you think we are, anyway? You get that information, you're not going to use it to help anyone, you're going to use it to force diets and exercise down our kids' throats, whether we want you to or not. Well guess what, Rep. Loeffler, you're damned lucky you're not in my district, because I sure as hell wouldn't vote for you the next time you're up for re-election.