This is the Wii Fit story behind the ‘Distraught ‘Fat’ 10 Year Old Girl’:

Wii Fit was the unlikely cause of (mild) public outrage when Obesity experts slammed the game after it told a 10-year-old girl she was fat.

Experts feared that the game could damage a child’s self image and confidence if they hopped on to the Wii Balance Board only to be told that they were over-weight. As you are no doubt aware, the Balance Board is used to calculate a players BMI (Body Mass Index), this is a measure of body fat based upon the players height and weight, and one of the categories is ‘fat’.

The girl in question was in fact a 4ft 9″ healthy girl from the South East of England who weighed a mere six stone, her father described her as “Solidly built but not fat.”  He went on to describe how she was; “Devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her she isn’t.”

Nintendo responded quickly and stated that the company would not be putting a warning on the game.  A spokesman explained that “Nintendo would like to apologise to any customers offended by the in-game terminology used to classify a player’s current BMI status, as part of the BMI measurement system integrated into Wii Fit.”

The spokesman continued by saying, ”Wii Fit is still capable of measuring the BMI for people aged between two and 20 but the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development.”

So that’s that sorted out.

The story first broke out in The Daily Mail in May 2008 - Obesity experts condemn Nintendo’s Wii ‘Fit’ game after it tells 10 year old she’s fat if you want to see the original article.