Posted on 07/04/2010 6:50:50 AM PDT by rellimpank
At some point, Americans are going to have to confront the real reason our kids are getting fat.
The obvious answer: They don't get enough exercise, especially outside play time. Duh.
These days, fat kids are more politicized than budget deficits. Every week, it seems, there's a new report telling us more kids are overweight. So politicians demand more tax money for new sports and recreation programs, they condemn and threaten the fast food industry, and they agitate for fully subsidized health care for children.
They even argue that the juvenile obesity epidemic can be reversed by significantly expanding welfare programs, and by having schools provide weekend meals. Poor kids used to go hungry. We're told today's poor kids are fat, not because they eat too much, but because their parents can't afford or don't have access to healthy foods.
First lady Michelle Obama has made childhood obesity her personal crusade, and she visited Las Vegas a few weeks back to promote her "Let's Move!" campaign. She's all for more food subsidies and federal interventions in the grocery trade, but to her credit, she's also encouraging kids to walk or bike to school, among other constructive ideas.
That said, the condescension that dominates this debate is enough to make anyone purge.
(Excerpt) Read more at lvrj.com ...
A do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do column about a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do First Lady.
We lived in the country surrounded by prison farm land. The only thing that separated us from the prisoners was a couple strands of barbed wire and shotguns held by guards.
When I was that age, I was regularly riding my bike to supermarkets, drug stores, etc. that were as distant as two miles from my home. I also knew every alley in West Whittier, Calif.
This wasn't all that long ago--Eisenhower was president. However, from the way society has changed, I may as well have lived in a different galaxy.
Texas cops are a different breed.
We have 8.6 acres in Texas and it’s legal to taget shoot (and hunt) in our rural area.
A neighbor keeps calling on my kids (18 and almost 17 now) for shooting on the little range we have set up. (”A bullet could ricochet!”) They didn’t like where we’d set up our deer stand. (”It’s too close to the property line!”)
After the 4th call, the cops told them that *they* would be charged with harassment of the *police* if they called again.
By G-d, I love Texas... :-)
I agree — it’s about the calories, not the exercise. Of course, they’re not totally independent, since if you’re outside playing you’re not sitting there with a bag of chips or whatever.
How comes these “poor single Mamas” in the inner city are so obese? How does Michele adress that?
I know, you’ll have an answer and solution for that one!
;)
There are also parks. And we had a yard. It was a postage stamp but it was a yard. Cars are no excuse for lazy kids.
I think there is more than one reason. Kids today can’t go outside and PLAY like we did. When I tell my kids that I ran outside after breakfast and we would run, swim, play in the neighborhood ALL day, they are amazed. I do not let my younger kids outside without an adult now. TOO many pedophiles and that concern. Also, my mom was a stay at home mom like all of my friends’ moms. They cooked real food. Nothing was fast or processed. It was baked chicken over microwave nuggets, mashed potatoes over french fries, and real vegetables (nothing from a bag with chemical sauce). We had two choices for a drink: milk or water. Kids today also have hours of homework. In comparison, I had maybe a half an hour over my ten year olds two plus hours. Homework that extended past an hour was for high school so we still played during the winter. Fast food was a once a month treat (not a weekly thing like today). As for junk... Mom baked something two to three times a week but it was burned off. Just a thought since this has been a topic of discussion in my family...
Keep in mind, I am not including the drug addicted single Mamas in the inner city. (crack, cocaine, heroine ...)
1. They eat too much junk. The stores are full of it, and it’s darn near irresistible to the palate of young kids. But if Mom and Dad don’t buy it, they can only eat it occasionally at their friends’ houses.
2. They don’t get outside to exercise. When I was growing up we covered many miles every day because (a) my mom would have laughed at the idea that I might be driven to friends’ houses, even in the winter; (b) before suburban sprawl, friends’ homes were close enough to walk or bike to, perhaps a mile or two; (c) mom wasn’t worried about me getting raped and strangled by a psycho who had spent his day downloading kid porn. We biked to the lake and spent the day swimming unsupervised; we ran around in the woods and fields; we rode our horses and cleaned up after them. Today, young kids are kept inside due to fear.
3. The sad fact is that even when parents think they’re giving their kids good food, that food is full of chemicals and hormones. There’s a reason so many of our kids are going into puberty at 7 or 8.
4. Pursuant to #2, above, kids seldom do exhausting chores anymore. No more push mowers!
Re: “When I was a kid we had 3 TV channels in black and white”
>HA! When I was a kid, My Grandfather’s upstairs tenant
>got the first TV in the neighborhood. It was an enormous
>box, with a little oval-shaped picture tube. It was more
>black and pale green! My Dad built our first TV from a kit!
Your conversation reminds me of this classic MP sketch...
Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen:
Eric Idle: Who’d a thought thirty years ago we’d all be sittin’ here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we’d a’ been glad to have the price of a cup o’ tea.
GC: A cup ‘ COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TG: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness.”
EI: ‘E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN’. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin’ in a corridor! Woulda’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say “house” it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TG: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o’clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.”
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won’t believe ya’.
ALL: Nope, nope...
Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
When I was a kid we lived next to a forest. We’d go running around in there during the summer, and sledding down the straighter trails in the winter. My first taste of “wild” edibles was a patch of chives I found out there (I think someone dropped their seeds, but at 8 years old that was like finding treasure).
Then the city came and cut it all down. Someone decided that there was a chance drug dealers could hide in the forest.
Now I bought my own land, and I’m planting my own forest. And stumbling across a patch of wild edibles still brings that same excitement as that little patch of chives did.
Kids aren't allowed to just have fun anymore. Left to their own devices they play and run off that energy. Moms used to watch out the window and if anyone got too rough or didn't play fair, the kids was marched home and a full report was given.
I snacked a lot as a kid. My mother constantly made delicous cookies, cakes, and pies which I scarfed up with reckless (and joyful) abandon on a daily basis. I was skinnier than a thin shoestring. Because like all the other kids, I was outside every day running around and playing like the little barbarian I was. Today’s kids simply don’t exercise enough.
That sounds similar to my upbringing. My mother made wonderful tacos and enchiladas as well as fried chicken and meat loaf. There were no "fast food" eateries at the time, but we might occasionally go out to Nixon's, a drive-in restaurant owned by the vice president's brother--the site is now an abandoned auto dealership--or to a coffee shop such as Jack's Salad Bowl in West Whittier (the last of the Jack's chain, which once dominated Whittier, is still in business on Whittier Blvd. It is owned by a Greek and serves excellent food).
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
Groucho Marx
I’ve noticed a lot more chunky kids than I used to, and I’m sixty.
It's's made in a factory like an oil refinery from GMO corn you couldn't eat if you tried, God , I miss old fashioned 'horse corn' and other varieties that have gone away.
HFCS hit's the liver quick, shutting down Leptin(the 'I'm Full" hormone) and increasing Grelin(the 'I'm Hungry").
There are other bad things, but that's enough to chew on for now.
Food stamps should be limited to whole, unprocessed foods and seeds. Dr Pepper and Doritos are not foods.
That’s great!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.