Are children really that overweight?
9:57am Monday 19th May 2008
Sir - In response to We're killing our children', can these figures be relied upon? Unsurprisingly, I am suspicious.
The weight police' wouldn't be doing their jobs properly if they didn't justify their existence with a few headline-grabbing statistics.
My children fall under the age groups mentioned and not one child in their classes could be fairly described as overweight, never mind obese. Is there a new governmental definition for overweight'? Is weight deviation now measured by the milligramme? Our children are being reduced to a weight trend, to be vilified or marketed to. As Patrick McGoohan didn't quite say, "They are not a number".
Why don't children play outside more? Possibly because the media would have us believe there is a paedophile living on every street - right next door to the terrorist, no doubt.
MARK MANNING, Kidderminster.