When does an overweight family become a news story?

I was coming in on the bus this morning and trying to think of a blogging topic when I heard the story of the family in Dundee who have been threatened with having their obese children taken away from them. Surely, there'd need to be more going on here than just allowing their children to become overweight? 


The Today website on Radio 4 is playing up at present so I can't link to it (they had an interview with Hilton Dawson, the chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers) but to give you a sense (if sense isn't entirely the wrong word...) of how The Telegraph has been commenting on the story take a look at this. Warning: It's liberal-baiting craziness from the Jeremy Clarkson school of sensitivity.


I've read social work guidelines on how children come to be removed from parents and I'm sure I remember that it's more complicated than just putting kids on a weighing machine. 
But that doesn't make a good headline, does it?