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Why do people believe certain foods automatically create fat kids. Fat kids are created by lazy parents who do not make sure their kids are active. To think computers and video games are not a leading contributor to obesity is ridiculous.
Oh, and a bit of advice to all the PC LI soccer moms...the kids can WALK instead of being transported in your new mini-van.
I have to agree with you, to a point. What's more, I'll add that usually overweight kids have overweight parents. If the parents eat bad food, kids are going to learn to eat bad food. If the parents live a sedentary lifestyle, the kids will learn to live a sedentary lifestyle.
But there's more to it than that.
Someone else mentioned phys ed. Phys ed is an afterthought in many schools now. That adds to the problem.
Places to play. There aren't many. A lot of areas are overdeveloped, with no parks or safe places for kids to congregate and have a good time.
Which brings us to crime. A lot of parents simply won't let their kids run around outside.
Expense. It can be expensive for a kid to participate in sports. That's if the parents or other adults in the kid's life are not working ridiculous hours at low-paying jobs and actually have the time to ferry the kid about to different games or events.
Socioeconomic status and time. If a divorced single mother is working two low-paying jobs just to stay afloat (and has to continually drag the father of her kids to court for child support payments), sheer exhaustion alone is going to make it much easier to pick up McDonald's or pizza for her kids instead of cooking a nutritious meal.
In other words, people can shriek about parents all they want, and they can alternately ask the government to step in or deride the government for stepping in, but there are many elements to childhood obesity. It's a societal problem, and steps need to be taken on numerous levels because at the rate we're going, and with the number of overweight and obese children getting not type 1, but type 2 diabetes, the health care system is going to suffer an epic fail when these kids start having their first heart attacks at age 30.
I walked over to my neighbor's house and asked whether she had yesterday's Newsday in order to read the article in it's entirety.
The OP did us a grave disservice by 1) not providing full details but a snippet of the free article, 2) Giving the thread a misleading title.
Michelle should have been inserted before Obama and within the Newsday article there is NO mention of the word ban. The First Lady does make a point of stating the campaign she's about to engage in will "Involve promoting healthier schools, increasing physical activity for kids, improving access to healthy foods and giving people more nutrition information."
A snippet of the intro and bullets (in order) from the article:
Quote:
After laying the groundwork for nearly a year, she (Michelle Obama) launches a campaign tomorrow against childhood obesity that she hopes will change the way millions of Americans eat, excercise, look and feel.
To succeed, she will have to take on powerful forces that have left one-third of children overweight:
1) Busy parents who hit the fast-food drive-through rather than cook a balanced dinner.
2) Schools were cafeteria meals compete with vending machines and a-la-carte lines with soda machines and candy bars.
3) Food companies that spend billions hawking fatty snacks to children.
4) Poor neighborhoods where nary a banana nor a head of broccoli can be found on store shelves.
5) The screens -- computer, TV, video -- that keep kids off their bikes.
In short, the First Lady is promoting what many of us here agree upon.
I walked over to my neighbor's house and asked whether she had yesterday's Newsday in order to read the article in it's entirety.
The OP did us a grave disservice by 1) not providing full details but a snippet of the free article, 2) Giving the thread a misleading title.
Michelle should have been inserted before Obama and within the Newsday article there is NO mention of the word ban. The First Lady does make a point of stating the campaign she's about to engage in will "Involve promoting healthier schools, increasing physical activity for kids, improving access to healthy foods and giving people more nutrition information."
A snippet of the intro and bullets (in order) from the article:
In short, the First Lady is promoting what many of us here agree upon.
I noticed that too... we were all misled... nice job OP
All this talk of food is making me hungry. Think I'm going to go out and get a double Whopper with cheese, superisze fries and wash it down with some Pepsi. Secretly all the Food Nazis are drooling right now...i know it.
If you fly I buy. But, I want single whopper, small fries and a large pepsi. Better make mine a diet. Trying to watch calories.
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