Nintendo Fitness Game Calls Kids Fat

Obesity experts today slammed Nintendo after its Wii Fit game told a 10-year-old girl she was fat. They fear the game could damage children's body image and called on the company to warn parents it is not suitable for their offspring.

A father spoke of the embarrassment his stepdaughter faced when she played the fitness game and was labelled fat.

'She is a perfectly healthy, 4ft 9in tall 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone,' said the father, who did not want to be named for fear of embarrassing the girl further.'

She is solidly built but not fat. She was devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her she isn't.'

The game costs £69 and sold out very quickly when it recently went on sale. The player enters their height & the game uses BMI to calculate their level of obesity, placing them in categories such as 'underweight' and 'fat'.

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum called for children to be banned from playing the game, claiming the BMI measurement was misleading.'I'm absolutely aghast that children are being told they are fat,' he said. 'BMI is far from perfect but with children it simply should not be used. A child's BMI can change every month and it is perfectly possible for a child to be stocky, yet still very fit. I would be very concerned if children were using this game and I believe it should carry a warning for parents.'

Nintendo said it would not be placing a warning on the game.

I was a larger child myself and although I am now content to be a plus size woman that was not always the case. Many of my self esteem issues were caused by the way my weight was dealt with as a child - constant diets, comments from family members etc. The poor youngsters of today face a future of self doubt if everyone is to be judged purely by their BMI.

New Zealand Bans the Obese

Doctors in New Zealand recently campaigned to ban fat people from entering the Country. How, I hear you say, can this not be discriminatory. Well it has been successful and has now happened.

35 year old Rowan Trezise has been rejected from entering New Zealand when her husband applied for a work visa. He chose to lose weight to get admitted himself. His employer backed skills visa was initially rejected by immigration officials when they discovered his BMI was 42, making him morbidly obese under New Zealand regulations.

Mr Trezise, a submarine cable specialist and a former soldier, said: 'My doctor laughed at me. He said he’d never seen anything more ridiculous in his whole life. Not every overweight person is unhealthy or unfit.'

But Robyn Toomath, a spokesman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic and an endocrinologist, said the BMI limit was valid in the vast majority of people. She said she was opposed to obese people being stigmatised. 'However, the immigration department’s focus is different,' she said. 'It cannot afford to import people into the country who are going to be a significant drain on our health resources.

So what I can gather from this is that discrimination is fine as long as it is justified by preventing possible additional use of public services, regardless of the ACTUAL health of the individual, which can be ascertained fairly easily. I am sick of discrimination being allowed in certain circumstances. Why is it publically thought of as ok to judge someone by their weight but not their race, religion or sex?

Well, I'm not planning a move to New Zealand so the urgency to lose a few pounds has definitely wained until the new year. I'm enjoying plus size shopping at places like Curvety.com far too much this season.

No IVF for the Obese

Are you fed up with hearing that every health problem is related to your weight? You go to the doctors with a bad leg, it's because you're overweight, you've got flu, it's because you're too heavy!

The newest health advice from experts is to deny anyone with a BMI of over 35 fertility treatment until they lose weight. Both privately and on the NHS! With about 25% of women in the UK falling into to overweight category is this fair?

'Obesity reduces the chances that a woman will conceive naturally and decreases the possibility that fertility treatment will be successful,' said Mr Tony Rutherford, the chair of the BFS's policy committee. 'It also increases the risk of complications during fertility treatment and pregnancy and endangers the health and welfare of both mother and child.'

The complications listed include the difficulty of providing safe anaesthesia for obese women during procedures, as well as problems with viewing ovaries on an ultrasound scan.

The BFS guidelines have no legal weight, but they are referred to by many professionals working in the field.

The chairman of the National Obesity Forum, Dr Colin Waine, said he found the new guidelines 'troubling'. 'Weight loss may improve the success of treatment, and women should be made aware of that, but to deny treatment outright is discriminatory,' he said. 'We are getting ourselves onto an increasingly slippery slope of rationing on the basis of weight, even when overweight people may benefit immensely from treatment.'

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UK Obesity Epidemic

Recently there has been much media speculation about the supposed obesity epidemic plaguing the UK. Jane Feinmann of the Independent interviewed Professor Patrick Basham to get to the fact in this argument. He says there is no real evidence to back up the claims.The claim, which states that half of the British population will be obese in 25 years time, makes many assumptions which have yet to be confirmed as fact. For example every overweight child will have to become an overweight adult and every overweight adult will have to progress to obesity for the figures to be true. There has been no research to prove this is the case.

So what about the adults that will all become obese? In 1997 the BMI classification of being overweight was changed from 27 to 25. Overnight millions of people previously classed as normal suddenly sat in the overweight category, and based on the epidemic claim they will all become obese. So although it is true that Body Mass Index statistics show a significant increase in overweight adults over the past decade this is an extraordinary case of moving the goalposts.

Although I am under no illusion that being severely obese can cause certain health problems, there is a common misconception that being overweight means you are automatically unhealthy. At a size 20 I exercise daily and eat a balanced and healthy diet which involves very little junk food. I am overweight and fighting fit. I purchase my clothes mainly online from the growing number of quality plus size clothing specialists like Curvety.com and take pride in looking great - and turning heads!