Repost: Honey I shrunk the Kids!

This article discusses some research about and implications of how height and weight measurements of children vary throughout the day. It was surprising to me that BMI measurements varied more between morning and night for girls than boys. The few that shifted from healthier categories to less healthy categories (e.g. from healthy to overweight or overweight to obese). The research was ignited by yearly studies done in England on hundreds of thousands of kids. The major implication is that, of the over 150,000 girls measured, as many as 6017 may have been mislabeled as being overweight. And, as the author discusses:

"Arguably of more importance is that potentially 6017 parents and children would be informed that their child is overweight, due to their misfortune of being measured in the afternoon as opposed to the morning. We know that children labelled as overweight may be at greater risk of stigmatisation, teasing and anxiety; it is not unimaginable therefore that such a letter could trigger unhealthy activity and dietary habits and unnecessary parental intervention."