Give slim kids higher marks, says French diet guru

[AnCap Dave]

Source

PARIS (Reuters) - Pierre Dukan, the nutritionist behind the popular but controversial Dukan diet, has suggested that France tackle child obesity by giving extra exam marks for slimness.

Dukan, who has sold 8 million copies of his diet book worldwide, made the proposal in a 250-page book called 'An Open Letter to the Future President', which he sent out on Tuesday to 16 candidates for France's presidential election.

The plan calls for high school students to be allowed to take a so-called "ideal weight" option in their final year exams, the "baccalaureat," under which they would earn extra points if they kept a body mass index (BMI) of between 18 and 25.

Those already overweight at the start of the two-year course would score double points if they managed to slim down over a period of two years.

"It's a fantastic motivator," Dukan told Reuters.

"The baccalaureat is really important in France. Kids want to get it, their parents want them to even more, so why not get them to work together on nutrition?"

Weight gain is becoming an increasing problem in France and experts say sedentary lifestyles and poor nutrition are to blame.

World Health Organisation (WHO) figures show 50.7 percent of the population were overweight in 2010, including 18.2 percent classed as obese.

"There's a real problem. Since the 1960s the number of overweight people in France has risen from 500,000 to 22 million and it's going up every year," Dukan said.

"When you reach those levels, it's no longer a health problem, it becomes a political problem, and the leaders of the nation need to worry about it."

As well as the suggestion for students, Dukan's book, which will hit French bookshops on Thursday, contains a further 119 suggestions for the future president on ways to fight obesity.

One idea is the creation of a French fast-food restaurant serving more nutritional versions of the ubiquitous burgers and fries.

Dukan has earned an international reputation as diet guru to the stars, although his methods have drawn criticism from some health experts and weightwatchers who say his high-protein meal plan causes fatigue, bad breath and dizziness. But he is also a committed campaigner for the promotion of healthier lifestyles.

He recently met executives from McDonald's France with a suggestion for a healthy "McDukan" burger, made with low-fat meat and with oatmeal bread instead of the usual white bun. Unfortunately, the giant food chain turned him down.

"They were interested, but they said the public wasn't quite ready for it yet," he said.

The BMI, obtained by dividing a person's weight by the square of their height, is used as an indicator of the proportion of body fat. The WHO defines a BMI of 18.5 to 25 as normal, 25 to 30 as overweight, and over 30 as obese.

Fat people have been, and always will be the most widely (no pun intended) accepted group to discriminate against.

We constantly hear all the time about how kids shouldn't bully other kids in school for things like weight, yet were this kind of thing implemented, it would give teachers a paying job in bullying fat children. It would also give fat kids the impression that unless they go on a diet, they will never do as well as their skinny peers.

[VectorM]

And what about naturally skinny people like me, who still eat all of the junk that fat people eat, do we deserve higher scores? Should I receive higher scores, simply because of the genes I was born with? Is this guy a COMPLETE moron?

Yet another control freak, who is incapable of minding his own business. Should be nominated for Idiot Extraordinarie.

[Ibrahim90]

Frankly, this shit sounds like a hell of a way to induce anorexia or Bulimia or some other eating disorder.

[ebalosus]

Sounds like a (and everyone say it together now)...Perverse Incentive

[Goaticus]

I still say the BMI is a Trojan Horse used to try to smuggle the Metric System into the U.S. What about people like me who are short and stocky? My BMI is 26.6 making me over weight, but my body fat is 4.5- 5%

[AnCap Dave]

I still say the BMI is a Trojan Horse used to try to smuggle the Metric System into the U.S. What about people like me who are short and stocky? My BMI is 26.6 making me over weight, but my body fat is 4.5- 5%

According to the BMI

This guy suffers from obesity:

[Travis Retriever]

Funny we should talk about BMI.  Cracked.com had a little bit to say about that.  Needless to say, the bit written about it is something worthy of Fav Quotes (Scroll down to #5 on the list):  http://www.cracked.com/article_19130_6-fitness-tips-everyones-heard-that-dont-work-at-all.html
That pretty much sums it up nicely.
And on the other side of the spectrum as VectorM, what about people with Thyroid problems, who physically can't lose weight unless they have medication to treat their glandular problem?

[ebalosus]

I still say the BMI is a Trojan Horse used to try to smuggle the Metric System into the U.S. What about people like me who are short and stocky? My BMI is 26.6 making me over weight, but my body fat is 4.5- 5%

You say that like it's a bad thing. Last time I checked, your currency has been a decimal one since its inception...

[VectorM]

I still say the BMI is a Trojan Horse used to try to smuggle the Metric System into the U.S

Of all the things to be worried about 

[Ibrahim90]

Of all the things to be worried about 

don't you know that a vote for SI is a vote for the guillotine? 

ok, jokes aside: I don't see much of a problem with SI. It's great for scientific purposes (dinosaurs aside-I'll get to that), and the decimal system of anything is actually very intuitive. If it is adopted some time int he US, then I'm OK with it.

on the other hand, I'm told (someone can correct or clarify) that builders in the US prefer the English system, as you don't have to worry as much about irrational numbers, or fractions, as much.

[Goaticus]

I didn't say I cared whether people used metric or not. That was a joke about the uselessness of the BMI as a diagnostic tool.
According to the article the BMI is " used as an indicator of the proportion of body fat." Since you can measure body fat directly the BMI is both misleading and useless.

[Ibrahim90]

I didn't say I cared whether people used metric or not. That was a joke about the uselessness of the BMI as a diagnostic tool.
According to the article the BMI is " used as an indicator of the proportion of body fat." Since you can measure body fat directly the BMI is both misleading and useless.

judging from the smileys, I don't think any of us were really serious-though I did continue in case someone did take it srsly..

I'm just happy Dukan was this weeks Idiot Extraordinare.

[MrBogosity]

According to the article the BMI is " used as an indicator of the proportion of body fat." Since you can measure body fat directly the BMI is both misleading and useless.

That, plus the fact that absolutely nothing in BMI actually measures body fat.

[evensgrey]

That, plus the fact that absolutely nothing in BMI actually measures body fat.

Indeed it doesn't.  (For another example of how worthless it is, Russel Crowe as he appeared in Gladiator is, acccording to BMI, obese.)

All BMI is is the old height/weight charts reduced to a single number.  There IS a more useful metric, the Body FAT Index, but it's not simple to measure, since you have to measure a person's buoyancy which means rather a large water tank.

[MrBogosity]

There is a way of doing it with callipers. It's not as accurate, but much more easily and cheaply done.