We need a new kind of food court in this country. The ones we have are sending out the wrong messages about food and about courts.

Food courts in malls are playgrounds for eating. They’re places where kids in particular kill time and fill up on more kinds of snacks than most people can name.

Food courts also make courts sound like fun places to hang out instead of intimidating chambers where grim justice is dispensed by stern judges.

For that reason, it would make sense to give food courts tough presiding judges. And to authorize the judges to enforce basic rules of nutrition.

A lot of kids aren’t learning those rules, and the situation is getting worse. According to a study called “Tipping the Scales: Obese Children and Child Safety Seats” in the April issue of Pediatrics magazine, more than 280,000 American kids under age 6 are too beefy to fit into the automobile safety seats designed for them.

Standard safety seats are designed for children ages 1 to 3 who weigh up to 40 pounds. The majority of kids who were too heavy for those car seats were 3-year-olds – 190,000 of them, or 5 percent of the 3-year-olds in the country.

There are so many, the researchers found, that makers of safety seats have begun making wide-ride “husky” sizes – sturdier models that are 10 pounds heavier and 4 inches wider than standard seats.

That makes sense, of course. Childhood obesity is increasing – and getting a kid to a healthy weight doesn’t happen overnight. Kids ought to be as safe as possible on the road.

But making super-size safety seats is dealing with the symptom, not the problem. The problem isn’t fat-bottomed kids. It’s fat-headed parents.

You can’t blame a munchkin for turning into a doughboy. Babies will eat until they fall asleep or explode. Toddlers will eat anything within reach as long as it’s sweet or bad for them. I believe this has been shown in studies.

It also has been shown on TV’s “The Maury Povich Show,” where “fat baby” day is as important as “who’s my baby’s daddy” day.

The typical “fat baby” show features a toddler who waddles out like a sumo wrestler. Maury has featured a 5-year-old who topped 200 pounds. He’s had toddlers whose necks look like packages of hot dogs.

None of these kids is fat because of a medical disorder, but the parents usually wonder about glands and metabolism. They act helpless when the kid pitches a fit if he isn’t fed on demand, or they say they’re baffled because he eats only what the rest of the family eats.

Then Maury shows video from home, and we see the kid hoovering up junk food like a condemned criminal.

This is not baby fat or chubbiness or plumpness. It’s obesity, and it’s spreading. A new government survey shows more than a third of U.S. children and teens are overweight – the highest number ever, up from 28 percent five years ago.

Statistics also showed more than 23 percent of kids ages 2 to 5 were overweight, and more than 10 percent of them were medically obese. Giving them the protection of safety restraint in cars is a good idea. The law requires it.

But obesity puts a child at much higher risk of developing the life-threatening illnesses associated with it. You have to wonder about parents whose way of dealing with it is buying a jumbo safety seat. Maybe one with a cup holder.

There ought to be a food court for them. Just not the kind they’re used to.