In this Onion News Network parody "news" clip (warning: with some mildly-coarse language), fake pundits debate whether or not America is doing enough to shame its obese children into losing weight. As one of the clip's talking heads puts it, "A simple regimen of 8-10 insults per day can help a child lose three pounds."

Unfortunately, this reductio ad absurdum argument isn't just a parody. This year, four states—Connecticut, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia—proposed to put children's body mass index (BMI) on their report cards (or to otherwise publish or calculate the number), and New Mexico introduced legislation to study "health and fitness report cards."

Aside from the physiological problems with using BMI as the final arbiter of children's health—and besides the obvious fact that public schools need to teach kids to read and write, not avoid junk food—this humiliating practice may lead to low-self esteem and eating disorders. For example, a high BMI number can pigeonhole some children into the "overweight" category, despite the fact that kids experience puberty (and subsequent weight gain) at different ages.

And while it may be troubling that 17.4 percent of school-aged adolescents are overweight, it's also troubling that one-half to one percent of American women suffer from anorexia—which usually appears in early-to-mid adolescence—and that bulimia affects an additional 1-2 percent of adolescent and young adult women.