Bye Bye BMI

Organisation / Service

EDFA & The Embrace Collective

Eating Disorders Families Australia and The Embrace Collective, and spearheaded by EDFA member and parent Kylie Burton advocated for changes to the Australian Curriculum to prevent the development and relapse of eating disorders.

Teachers are now advised to avoid activities that could do more harm than good for students, such as recording and comparing body weight and body measurements; calculating body mass index (BMI) or caloric intake; and recording what they eat in food diaries. The advice covers several learning areas to make teachers more aware of the potentially negative impact of teaching about food in ways that involve judgement, numbers or rigid food rules.

The advice has recently been published in the Curriculum connection: Food and Wellbeing resource which was updated to align with Version 9 of the Australian Curriculum. 

The advice to teachers now states:

The following activities should be avoided to prevent causing unintended harm:

• Critiquing and comparing personal food and wellbeing choices and habits with those of other people, including calculating kilojoules/calories; assessing body weight and body measurements; calculating BMI (body mass index); and recording food intake in food diaries.

• Focusing on constant improvement for all students to be “healthier” and using the terms “good” and “bad” foods.

Read more about this campaign from The Embrace Collective.

National Strategy Standards and Actions

Prevention

Standard 1: The principle of 'do no harm' in relation to eating disorder risk is applied to public policy and practice.

Action 1.2: All levels of government to ensure that public policy and initiatives related to education, health promotion, food and nutrition, physical activity, weight management, advertising and media do not contribute to eating disorder risk, drawing on eating disorder-safe principles and expert input.

Standard 3: There is increased community capacity and expertise to prevent eating disorders through a ‘do no harm’ approach which acts to reduce risk and bolster protective factors.

Action 3.1: Eating disorder service development and lived experience organisations to partner with other sectors, industries, professional bodies and consumer groups to develop and disseminate training and supporting resources in eating disorder-safe principles for community, health and education professionals working with a diverse range of people and communities, and support their implementation.

Standard 4: Home and family, school, work, health, online, and sports, fitness and performance environments bolster protective factors and reduce risk factors.

Action 4.3: Primary and secondary schools to implement whole-of-school policies and procedures to drive a culture of body appreciation and positive relationships with food and eating, promote wellbeing and mental health literacy, including taking a harm minimisation approach across all curricula and a zero-tolerance approach to appearance or identity-based teasing and bullying.