"Over the last three decades, the number of overweight children in America has tripled to 16 percent, so it would seem that anything that can help kids get to a healthy weight is worth considering. But schools aren't helping if children think they're being labeled as fat. That could be the effect of a program pioneered in Arkansas, which three years ago began measuring students' body mass index - or B.M.I., a calculation based on weight and height - and then sending home what kids are calling "obesity report cards." Pennsylvania and West Virginia do similar surveys, and about a dozen states, including New York, have bills to follow suit.

As Jodi Kantor reported in The Times this week, B.M.I. scores and the percentile rankings can confuse already overburdened parents and demoralize students, who now have one more grade to consider. The index also isn't a particularly precise measurement tool. Muscles, which weigh more than fat, can push up a B.M.I., labeling even a young athlete as physically unfit. If schools are going to hand out B.M.I. reports they need to do a better job explaining their significance to parents and children.

Schools certainly need to do more to help students manage their weight by limiting the sale of junk food and by serving less nachos and more fresh vegetables in cafeterias. Educators should also pump up gym classes. In an environment in which even a pimple can upset the fragile social pecking order, why add the stress of having to make weight?"

"Six-year-old Karlind Dunbar barely touched her dinner, but not for time-honored 6-year-old reasons. The pasta was not the wrong shape. She did not have an urgent date with her dolls.

The problem was the letter Karlind discovered, tucked inside her report card, saying that she had a body mass index in the 80th percentile. The first grader did not know what 'index' or 'percentile' meant, or that children scoring in the 5th through 85th percentiles are considered normal, while those scoring higher are at risk of being or already overweight.

Yet she became convinced that her teachers were chastising her for overeating.

...To successfully change students' eating habits, schools would need to counsel each child and provide 'really high-quality nutrition and physical activity assessments,' said Marlene Schwartz, director of research and school programs at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. 'How often are they eating fruits and vegetables? How much soda are they drinking?'

Christina Bové is the mother of three children who attend the Blossburg schools. She clutched a picture of her 9-year-old son, Christian, in a bathing suit, to prove that he was not 'at risk of overweight,' as his 92nd percentile score had indicated.

The letter was inaccurate -- and useless, Ms. Bové said. 'The school provides us with this information with no education about how to use it or what it means,' she said.

Ms. Bové is more worried about her daughter Alora, age 8, who has lately taken up carrot sticks and constant weigh-ins. 'She walks out of the bathroom saying, 'I weigh 68 pounds, and none of you can say that,' ' Ms. Bové said.

For the kind of young woman who counts every kernel of no-butter popcorn, the index reports can be dangerous, some experts said.

'A letter from school feels evaluative,' said Kelly M. Vitousek, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and a specialist in eating disorders. Declaring a weight healthy 'without knowing the background of how the kid got there, you're affirming kids who have actively done something to suppress weight,' she said.

The practice of reporting body mass index scores in schools has gone from pilot program to mass weigh-in despite 'no solid research' on either its physical or psychological impact, and 'no controlled randomized trial,' said Ms. Schwartz of Yale. 'Entire states are adopting a policy that has not been tested.'"

A growing number of American children are putting on lots of extra pounds.  Indeed, the American Obesity Association characterizes the increase in recent decades in the number of obese American children as "dramatic": while only 7% of children ages 6 to 11 were obese in 1976-1980, 15.3% were so classified in 1999-2000.  Although health officials blame many different dietetic and cultural patterns for this unhealthy trend, many researchers see the national retreat from family life as a powerful influence.   Had the homemaking mother not become a relative rarity in many American neighborhoods, the American Obesity Association (AOA) would probably not now be worried about the "frequency of fast-food eating" among American families, nor would the AOA be trying to reduce childhood obesity by urging the re-establishment of a home life in which families "eat meals together at the dinner table at regular times."   Though the canons of political correctness forbid any suggestion that culinary tasks belong to mothers more than fathers, the AOA recognizes that it will reverse the dangerous obesity trends only if parents and children once again "prepare foods together" so that children "can learn about healthy cooking and food preparation."

But a much less obvious reason that the disappearance of the homemaker has helped produce such a perilously overweight generation of children showed up in a study recently concluded by researchers at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.  By scrutinizing data collected for over 177,000 children tracked through the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, the CDC scholars detected a clear inverse relationship between sustained breastfeeding (practiced much more often by homemaking mothers than by employed peers) and the likelihood of childhood obesity.

After careful scrutiny of the data, the CDC investigators conclude that "the rate of overweight at 4 years of age was highest among children who were never breastfed or who were breastfed for <1 month."  The CDC researchers further limn "lower rates of overweight among children who were breastfed for longer durations." 

Although the protective effect of prolonged breastfeeding showed up in the cumulative data for the entire sample, this protective effect stood out especially strongly for non-Hispanic white children.  Among non-Hispanic white children, only 6.7% of those who were breastfed for 12 months or longer were overweight at age 4, compared to 14.5% of those who were never breastfed and 14.3% of those who were breastfed for less than one month. 

Because overweight children are especially likely to become overweight adults and because being overweight predicts problems with blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes, the CDC researchers view the "epidemic" of childhood obesity with grave concern.   They therefore underscore their findings as strong new support for "the rationale for recommendations to breastfeed an infant for at least a full year."

Pediatric recommendations for prolonged breastfeeding, however, will remain merely a dead letter for far too many children so long as cultural and economic forces push mothers out of the home and into paid employment.