Children On Obesity Billboards: Did Georgia Go Too Far?

With the drastic and dangerous increases in childhood obesity rates, governments are pulling out all the stops to change the health of the youngest residents of the United States. First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move program is trying to influence diet and exercise in kids and some states are implementing BMI scores on school report cards. But how far is too far?

In Georgia, the latest campaign to fight obesity involves advertisements of chubby kids warning parents again the dangers of being overweight. The billboards and online videos are causing very mixed reactions -- some believe these are the measures need to jar parents into reality and others believe it's humiliating to kids.

Do you think the ads are going too far in trying to make a statement about overweight children?

We asked some of our readers, and here's what they had to say:

Bridget M.
Its exploiting our children trying to shame them...uncalled for.

Craig W.
...we need to start doing drastic things such as this. With all of the bs food compromising our young people's lives, and with the lack of nutritional education in schools, we really have no choice at this point if we want the next generation to come close to outliving us.

I was a fat kid myself and allowing kids to have a mentality that "fat is good" or even acceptable is just plain ignorant.

I strutted around like I was awesome because I was ignorant. I didn't even think I was fat (I was obese) and yeah, I didn't realize how calories worked when I was 10 or 11.

If someone would have just said "Hey, stop eating so much, here is what you need to do to become healthy because being fat isn't good" it wouldn't have taken me until I was 13 to become a normal shaped human.

Obviously it starts at home, where the parents choose the food. If parents actually still cook these days in 2011, which few probably do, and eat with their children, they will have the greatest chance of being healthy.

If you let your kids choose what to eat, ignorant to nutrition and calories, they are obviously going to pick the overly-processed high-caloric foods.

Don't have time to cook for your children? Then don't have children.

Maria C.
I don't think they do. Seeing our children sick, obese, and dying is "To go too far."

Heidi F.
Shaming anyone does not work it just drives their behavior into secret with many more problems that arise. Putting classes in schools teaching the children and the parents how to cook and eat nutritiously would be a far better alternative.Providing the children better snack alternatives and providing obese children health coverage to find programs to help them reduce their weight whether it be support groups or other medical intervention is the key. Finding the root cause for the behavior,teaching, support and preventative care is the best alternative to changing someone's behavior. If it is an addiction, then treat it as that.The billboards are just a cheap way to humiliate people and not deal with the problem.

Naomi J.
What about the fat kid in the picture? A bit extreme maybe..."HEY! Kid! You're fat and I'm going put a billboard up of you so you can remember and be humiliated by your friends about just how fat you are."

This kid doesn't go to the store by himself and buy the food folks, as parents we have a responsibility of teaching our kids to eat right, not make them feel crappy about themselves.

Put a fat adult on there feeding a shadowed fat kid maybe, show how it starts from parents and not the child.

Ellie F.
Poor=Fat. It's a fact. Look it up. Solve poverty and childhood obesity goes away too.