How to Win the Weight Battle

When busy parents like Dana and Brad Carpenter of Austin make family dinners, the kids learn balance and portion sizes.

School weight screenings, now performed in 16 states, have yielded mixed reviews. Though the report cards sent home with kids who have high body mass indexes work to inform parents about the problem, they don't provide effective solutions. "Many parents assume they should put their child on a diet," says Berkeley's Ikeda.

What's worse, the reports may be inaccurate. A government analysis found that 17 percent of kids who have a BMI that nudges them into the overweight category actually have a normal percentage of body fat but are large boned or have a greater muscle mass. Nine-year-old Ben Baturka, an avid swimmer who does up to 2 miles of laps while training for his swim meets, was put in the BMI "at risk" zone last year by Hillcrest Elementary School in Drexel Hill, Pa. "He's always been a big boy, but he's a healthy eater and as fit as he can be, so I'm going to ignore the school letter," says Ben's mother, Angie. The American Medical Association recently recommended that doctors perform BMI screenings during annual physicals, looking for weight-related health risks like hypertension or high cholesterol, too.

Some families go too far by turning healthful eating into a new religion. "Anorexia often starts with healthy eating behaviors, like cutting down on bread and other starches, that evolve to become too restrictive," says pediatrician Tania Heller, director of the Washington Center for Eating Disorders and Adolescent Obesity in Bethesda, Md. "My mom was always into organic food, so she didn't notice when I got on a health kick, running more miles and avoiding all fat in my diet," says Marina Leith, 17, who was treated by Heller for anorexia after dropping 30 pounds in less than two months four years ago. She's now a high school senior, back to a normal weight.

Think positive. How to get a child to a healthy weight in the healthiest possible way? Most experts now favor a positive approach—showing, for example, ways that exercise strengthens the body and refreshes the mind and how certain nutrients in foods help cells, organs, and bones grow properly. Hundreds of schools are now trying out Planet Health, a curriculum developed by Harvard University researchers that disguises obesity prevention by integrating healthful messages about the power of food and exercise into various subjects. Students in math class, for example, come to appreciate the importance of reducing TV viewing by calculating the hours they've spent over their lifetime in front of the set. A 2005 study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that middle school girls who had Planet Health in their schools were half as likely to purge or use diet pills as those in schools without it.

A second program adopted by 7,000 elementary schools nationwide, the Coordinated Approach to Child Health, similarly puts the focus on good health habits instead of weight. In class, students use a traffic-light system to identify "go," "slow," and "whoa" foods and take breaks to do jumping jacks. In the cafeteria, fruits, vegetables, low-fat milk, and whole-grain starches are labeled with green-light tags, and pizza gets a yellow light. Gym activities are designed to keep students constantly moving. "Every kid gets a ball to dribble or a hula hoop; there's no lining up and waiting to take a turn," says Philip Nader, professor of pediatrics emeritus at the University of California-San Diego, who helped develop catch. One study found that the program succeeded at preventing the growth in number of overweight students that normally occurs from grade 3 to grade 5. catch schools in El Paso, Texas (with one of the highest obesity rates in the nation), held the line between those grades; elsewhere in the city, the share of overweight girls increased from 26 percent to 40 percent and of overweight boys from 39 percent to 49 percent.