Not all fast food is junk food and not all soft drinks are filled with sugar, but Americans are consuming these products — and neglecting to exercise — enough to cause an epidemic of obesity.

To help fight this problem, many school systems and colleges have begun measuring their students’ body mass index to gauge the state of their health.

Connye Rowland, state health coordinator for Meigs County schools, said BMI is just one aspect of the screening. Officials also check vision, hearing, blood pressure, height and weight.

“The health coordinator program was put in place to lessen behavior issues, strive toward healthier children and teach about abstinence from smoking and many other things,” she said.

To calculate BMI, according to the March issue of Medicine and Science in Sports, a person’s weight is divided by his or her height and squared.

However, this number can be misleading since BMI does not take muscle mass into consideration. Students who are engaged in athletic activities or who have a bigger build often are labeled as overweight based on the denser weight of muscle mass. Experts caution that BMI doesn’t tell the complete health story, especially in younger children.

The increasing numbers of overweight children have led some school systems to provide healthier choices for students. Ninety minutes of exercise each week is guaranteed by law, and vending machines now contain healthier choices.

“My freshmen year, we just had Coke machines,” said Meigs County High School student Brooke Melhorn. “Then they added Mayfield milk machines and Dasani water/Fuze machines.”

According to Ms. Rowland, “The coordinated health program is not only providing better choices but trying to put together health classes that will teach students how to make healthier choices.”

Some students said classroom instruction on nutritious choices and the food pyramid might have been too brief.

Jill Davis remembers health being taught but not enough to make much of a difference.

“I remember learning how many servings of each group to eat every day and not to eat too much sugar, but I wouldn’t say the teachers made a big deal out of it,” she said. “If you asked me now how many servings of fruit to eat each day, I couldn’t tell you.”

In 2008 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that a BMI of 30 percent or more is considered obese. Tennessee is one of six states that had a prevalence of obesity equal to or greater than 30 percent.

Hannah Kerley is a student at Meigs County High School.