Being “fat” is the most common reason children are bullied, and something needs to be done about it.
That is the predominant view of thousands of adults from four different countries who, when asked why children are bullied, said the most common reason was not race, religion, physical disability or sexual orientation, but weight. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that schools and anti-bullying policies need to address the issue, with many calling it a “serious” or “very serious” problem.
Yet most state anti-bullying laws don’t protect overweight children, said Rebecca Puhl, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut in Hartford and the lead author of the report, the first cross-national study investigating weight-based bullying, published in Pediatric Obesity.
There are no federal laws that guarantee equal treatment of people who are overweight or obese.
[For more of this story, written by Roni Rabbin, go to http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/...ing/?src=me&_r=0]
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