Peculiar Approach? Malaysian Child Obesity

I stumbled upon an interesting article today about how Malaysia is aiming to make the issue of child obesity more aware to families. Interestingly enough, Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai has backed up and enacted including a childs weight in their school report cards.... wierd i know, but an interesting tactic in all respects.

Schools across Malaysia are going to grade students based on their weight, in the form of Body Mass Index (BMI), which will allow parents to consider whether their children need a wake up call in terms of diet and exercise.

Child Obesity is an epidemic (Source: Wayne, 2009)

A very peculiar approach indeed, but the benefits of it seem quite obvious. Malaysia have banned sugary drinks and junk food from their school cafeterias and this solves the issue at school. This new appraoch, however, seems to give parents a wake up call and gives them the remote control to help fix child obesity in Malaysia. This, from a planning perspective, makes sense theoretically but in actual practice will they suceed? This is yet to be seen but past experiences have shown that these types of initiatives work to a very limited extent and only become relevant to some people. For example, parents whose children are extremely obese will get a much needed wake up call, however, those who may be classified as 'slightly overweight' or just 'overweight' may not see the importance behind the issue. Just a thought, but along with this move there needs to be more involvement and education behind child, and eventual adult, obesity so that the importance of these 'weight grades' can be realised.

Heres the link to the article

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10720398

Reference:

Photo: Wayne, M. (2009): "Obesity in Children" http://www.lowdensitylifestyle.com/media/uploads/2009/11/obesity_41.jpg (Accessed: 19/04/11).