Push for classroom weigh- ins

EVERY Australian child’s height and weight would be measured and recorded in primary school unless parents chose to “opt out” of the checks under a drastic proposal to tackle Australia’s worsening obesity crisis.

Checks would be done at school for all children in Year 1 and Year 6 at minimum, or every two years at best, to better help the Government understand the real scope of Australia’s “obesity epidemic”.

It’s part of a plan by the Global Obesity Centre ( GLOBE) to tackle Australia’s weight problem given the country now ranks sixth worst among OECD nations behind Mexico, the US, New Zealand, Finland and Chile.

GLOBE predicts the real number of overweight Aussies is likely to be even higher than shocking official figures, which show one in five children aged two to four are now overweight and one in four children aged five to 17 are overweight or obese.

The centre, which collaborates with the World Health Organisation and is based at Deakin University, is calling for compulsory height and weight checks for children unless parents “opt out” to determine the real scale of the crisis in a submission to the Federal Government’s inquiry into the nation’s obesity epidemic.

But Health at Every Size Australia, a group which lobbies for a focus on healthier lifestyle behaviours not body shape or size, says the checks could backfire.

“We know without a doubt when kids are given the impression that weight control is important that that actually leads to worse eating habits,” spokeswoman Fiona Willer said. She also warned it could lead to worse stigmatisation of high body weight.

The checks would be done at schools by medical professionals, similar to a UK model launched in 2006.

Children would not be told their results, as is the case in the UK, to avoid kids comparing results in the schoolyard, and data would not be connected to a child’s name.