Isobel Pankhurst
A mum has started an online campaign to stop Body Mass Index (BMI) checks on children after she received a letter from her four-year-old daughter's school saying she is overweight.
Lauren Ormesher, of Skelmersdale, received the letter after the school conducted a BMI check.
Ormesher's daughter Maggie, who attends Cobbs Brow Primary School, had recently been crowned the 'petite' Lancashire winner of a national pageant celebrating diversity called 'Miss Diamond UK.
Speaking to Lancs Live, Ormesher said: "We got a letter home saying she's overweight - I put a post up on Facebook and it turns out a lot of kids all over the country got this letter saying they're overweight.
"It's nothing to do with school - a lot of parents had it and had received letters; one was from South Wales and some were from London area and all over the place. Our letter was addressed to the parent or guardian of Maggie, and it said she was overweight according to their test.
"I was quite shocked as she's a very healthy child and to see the word 'overweight' seemed crazy. Then I felt angry at the damage a letter like this could do to such young children."
The body mass index (BMI) is a measure that uses height and weight to work out if a person's weight is healthy, according to the NHS.
These checks have been conducted throughout the UK in an attempt to ensure children maintain a healthy weight and active start in life.
However, in recent years BMI checks have begun to draw criticisms.
A report in Medical News Today states that BMI checks do not take into account muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, and racial and sex differences.
In a post shared on Facebook, Ormesher wrote that she started her campaign "because BMI is not an accurate way to measure a child's health."
She added: "Hopefully this gets the discussion moving forward on alternate ways to keep our children healthy without labelling them with incorrect terms & damaging letters being sent home."
The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by Belgian mathematician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He created this to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population.
But Quetelet explicitly stated, even back then, that this should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual, nor should it be used to indicate a person's overall health.