University of South Australia professor of health sciences Tim Olds, who is involved in an anti-obesity program that has taken height and weight measurements from thousands of South Australian schoolchildren, said those taking part in the voluntary program were not given individual data.
''That may avoid the pitfalls of parents overreacting or sensitising children to body image issues. We want population-level data, and this doesn't tell us much about the individual child. Kids go through puberty, and they can go from being really tubby to beanpoles in six months.''