Minimally there’s excellent evidence kids today as a whole eat a lot more calories than kids did 30 years ago. The obesity epidemic is interesting and tricky from a statistics point of view because the mean is often pretty useless. With most average weights you have a lot of people a little bit under it and group of “overachievers” waaaay over it, which also is where most of the health problems come in.
Personally I’m generally in the “nudge” camp when it comes to the “personal responsibility” vs. “nanny state” arguments. Although with kids those nudges can be a lot stronger. As I recall, kids are stupid, or at least very foolish. They need to be protected from themselves. This penalty was overly harsh, but I’m a lot more upset when jerk principals cancel prom because homosexual students want to attend together.
