Lots of laws are enacted to protect us from others. Some are real protection, like laws against murder, drunk driving, and the like. Some are against perceived problems, like smoking in public. Before everyone gets up in arms on that one, look at the literature "proving" a connnection between secondhand smoke and cancer.

T here are helmet laws designed to force motorcyclists to wear head protection, and seat belt laws that make you buckle up or face a fine. Lots of laws are there for our own good, even those that we don't agree with.

Having said all that, I ran across an article in timesonline.co.uk which seems to take protection to a new level.

There's a serious problem with obesity in the UK, as there is in many other countries. There are new laws being considered which would in certain cases remove obese children from their homes and parents.

The Local Government Association argues that parents who allow their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who do not feed their children at all.

There have been some reported cases where children under 10 have weighed up to 200 lbs (89kg) and a three-year-old has weighed 140 lbs (64kg)– putting them at a high risk of diabetes and heart disease. Only last week a 15-year-old girl in Wales was told by doctors that she could "drop dead at any moment" after tipping the scales at 462 lbs (210 kg).

"Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children's health in real danger," said David Rogers, the Local Government Association's public health spokesman. "As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child's health under review?"

Anne Ridgway, of Cumbria Primary Care Trust, said that it was extremely rare for a child to be put into care just because of their weight. "Even then the care proceedings may well have been instigated because of related problems rather than exclusively because of their weight," she said. Extreme cases of obesity could become a child protection issue because obesity "can have very serious consequences for a child's health and the parental behaviour that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect".

I have been fortunate in that I've never really been obese, even though I've got a few spare kilos to lose, so I can't completely relate to the issue, but past discussions about the subject here have been enlightening. I don't think there's any question that morbid obesity is a serious health issue, but the question arises whether it's the role of the state to intervene with children.

How do you feel? Is this a reasonable approach to a serious issue, or is it an intrusion that goes far beyond the boundaries of state control in a free society? Would you report a neighbor with a seriously overweight child to Child Protective Services? If you had a seriously overweight child and someone reported you, how would you feel? Has a line been crossed here?

It's a sad situation for sure, but it still isn't the governments business. IMHO

with rancher

As I've been saying for years, there's nothing more annoying, and nothing more dangerous, than a bored bureaucrat who has to think of more things to justify their jobs.

. Proper parental training is the answer. Fast food establishments could care less whether we become obese or not, after all, their profits would suffer. Government has no right to tell us what and what not to eat. Kids these days have nothing to do, except sit around watching TV and playing video games. Damn, when I was a kid, I was up at dawn, riding my bike to friends houses, digging foxholes, climbing trees, playing alley alley oops and a multitude of other physical events. We have done this to ourselves and our kids are paying the price.

quote:

Originally posted by HeminatorTom:
Kids these days have nothing to do, except sit around watching TV and playing video games. Damn, when I was a kid, I was up at dawn, riding my bike to friends houses, digging foxholes, climbing trees, playing alley alley oops and a multitude of other physical events. We have done this to ourselves and our kids are paying the price.

There is nothing stoping people from doing that today. I have a niece who is already overweight and is still in kindergarden. My sister has bad eating habits and is passing them on to her...like rewarding good manners with dessert, and eating out too much, or simply giving her cookies because she is too lazy to cut up some fruit for her.

The kid has a healthy apetite, so I make sure she is up and more active. I'm trying to get her into softball