• Requiring students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12 to take physical education.
  
• Requiring child care providers to offer at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day.
  
• Requiring schools to develop comprehensive wellness plans that include policies to offer kids more nutritious lunches.

Frankly, the idea that obesity is not a real problem in this country or that it's not important is unbelievable.  It's a huge public health issue, and yes, a lot of that is a matter of individual responsibility as well as government responsibility - which I think is being addressed to a certain degree with the school initiatives.

I've been skinny all my life and so is everyone in my family. My son, on the other hand, has fought his weight ever since he was about 7 years old. I fed him a diet like the one I grew up on -- lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, no desserts other than fruit, no baked goods except on holidays, no sweet cereals, candy, snacks or soft drinks. He was, in fact, a very picky eater who rarely finished his food -- and always ate much less than any of his friends. And yet, he was heavier than most. He was a large baby (9 lbs. 10 ounces when he was born) and extremely active. At 9 months he was rearranging the furniture in the living room. At a year he weighed 30 lbs. When I expressed concern about his weight at one year, the pediatrician pointed out that it was all muscle, which was true.

The simple fact is he has a very difficult metabolism -- to stay thin he has to be much, much, much more active than most people and it has to be VERY intense physical activity. He had no trouble staying slim as a very active toddler -- but once he started school and spent most hours forced to be still and mostly sitting, he started to gain weight. In some earlier human period when food was scarce and life was physically very hard his metabolism would be a blessing. In the modern world, it is a curse.

Star wades into social event, estabishes self as the thinnest one there, loudly proclaims: I. Am. Such. A. WHALE! (to cries of No! Look at you! You're the fairest in the land!)

Body dysmorphia is a real and tragic condition. Malnutrition isn't a fat/thin thing, nor is pain. I don't abide the "Mean Girl" model of getting to be cruel to others based on thinness.

Talk to me after a year of lunches in CA where you're the only one not taking "breaks" between courses and, at the end of the meal the "healthiest" (AKA thinnest one) pontificate on his/her strenuous workouts.

Any b!tchiness in my comment was about how repeatedly shocked I am at Caulifornia's (Left Coast's) tragic culture of not appreciating their bounty of beautiful, fresh, healthy food while simultaneously hating on those without access to the same wealth.

Simply wailing on fat kids or their "failing" parents in Indignation Nation isn't going to accomplish it this.

Corporations and schools have been fattening their budgets while using children and young people as human dumpsters. It's not just up to parents but the whole "village" to change that.

In case I've misinterpreted the direction of your frustration (or didnt't make clear in my own), no one's excusing bad habits. It's no more compassionate to enable mindless eating than it is to use condemnation first and alone to assign blame, and remember that super-sized kids have been trained to eat past pain.

I take your concern for your student as being based on health rather than the visual blight of size. In that case, I'd recommend taking this particular student under your wing as a research assistant for whatever you're teaching, and (for example) having the kid walk to and from the library to retrieve materials for you.

Our collective consumerist mindset, in the land of everything being available 24/7, always, is to regard the process as complete once we get the thing that we immediately want.

That achievement-point should be better viewed as merely the halfway point or even lower, with individual "digestion" (or blowback) being the next phase, and, ecologically, the impact on the environment/community as a whole as the next.