Should Weight be Given Less Weight in Public Health?

Obesity is a complex chronic illness of adiposity, yet body weight and obesity are routinely conflated in public health wording and policy design. This paper examines a recent recommendation from the Australian College of Nursing (ACN) to combat obesity via the routine collection and discussion of weight and height data of all school-aged children in the country. The obesity-specific ethical framework developed by ten Have and colleagues (2013) has been used to critique the ACN proposal, and to propose a shift away from weighing people, particularly young people, in health promotion activities for obesity.