Guess What F Is For? Fat

The way state representative Gary Biggs sees it, things in Arkansas had pretty much reached critical mass. Not only were 60% of adults in the state overweight or obese, but their kids were catching up fast: a quarter of Arkansas' high school students are overweight or "at risk." The state health director estimates that Type 2 diabetes, formerly known as the adult-onset variety, is up 800% in kids over the past decade. Even the state's preschoolers have grown shockingly plump: almost 10% are overweight. Says Biggs: "I have been on the house public-health committee for three terms, and I got tired of hearing 'Thank God for Mississippi'"--which has an even higher obesity rate than Arkansas does. Something had to be done.

Something was. As the state's 1,139 public schools opened their doors for a new year, they faced a new task. For the first time they will be asked to issue each student a health report card in the form of a body mass index, or BMI (see box). As lawmakers initially envisioned the plan when they passed the Biggs-sponsored bill in April, schools were to literally add a section to report cards--alongside the traditional assessments in reading, writing and 'rithmetic--for this measure of a child's body. At a time when schools are increasingly taking on responsibilities once left to parents--from teaching about sex and drugs to enforcing dress codes--this development was perhaps not all that surprising. But feeding a child is arguably a parent's most elemental task, so the prospect of schools' intruding in such an intimate matter and issuing F-is-for-fat grades was mortifying to many.

"There was concern among some parents of overweight children that the report card would be snatched from the child's hand and passed around for everyone to see, and the child would be tormented," explains state PTA president Kathy McFetridge. So last week Arkansas' new child-health advisory committee voted to modify the plan. Health reports will be mailed separately to parents, and families may even opt out of the program. In addition, chastened policymakers agreed to begin pilots of the policy in a few schools this fall before rolling it out statewide in the spring.

Arkansas is the first state to embrace, however gingerly, the health-report-card approach, but other states are exploring similar policies and other steps to control childhood obesity. They are propelled by some remarkably scary statistics. Nationally, 15% of children ages 5 to 19 are overweight, triple the rate of 20 years ago. Research suggests that fat adolescents have a 70% to 80% chance of becoming fat adults. They face higher rates of atherosclerosis, hypertension and diabetes. "These kids could need coronary bypass in their 20s," says Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale University Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. "This could be the first generation of American children to lead shorter lives than their parents."