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 ...
All she has to do is tour the U.S. carrying a sign which states:
"Do you want to grow up to look like me?"
Cheap but effective.
The "obvious answer" should be they eat way too much junk. It's a LOT easier to take in calories and gain weight than it is to burn calories and lose weight. You'd have to jog about 10 miles to burn the calories from a single doughnut. I could be off on the numbers, but not by much.
Mc Donald’s existed when I was a kid. So did junk food, and even video games. And I was still not fat.
When I was young my mother would routinely kick me out of the house first thing on a hot summer morning. “Go out and play!” she’d yell. “But there’s no one to play with!” I’d protest. “Play with yourself!” she’d reply.
The menu's I've seen in my daughter's school suggest this is a horrible idea, the kids would be better to stay home and play X-Box than to eat the crap they serve at schools.
Typical menu:
Corn dogs
Mac N Cheese
Milk
generic desert
That isn't much better than McDonalds, but even if a kid eats that, if they are playing outside and staying active, they won't gain weight. But if you sit at home playing video games and eat that, you're gonna get fat!
P.S. The secret to perfect Snickerdoodles was Crisco..
We’re Americans and we are supposed to be fat. We earned it.
I’m guessing your parents didn’t allow McDonalds do all the cooking for your home. I know my urban friends seldom cook when they have a dozen fast food places within a couple of blocks of their home.
The last time I had fast food was about two years ago when I stopped on my way home from the upper peninsula.
It’s nobody’s fetchin’ business how fat kids are today!
We've gone from riding our bikes to the nearest convenience store to buy comics, cards and candy, to not letting kids ride alone at all -- even in the relative safety of suburbia, even if we've bought them cell phones...
...In the Southern Arizona neighborhood of my youth, the elementary school was also the local park. The grounds were open, so playgrounds and fields could be accessed any time, day or night...
...When I was a kid, early arrivals at school were guaranteed a spot in games of football, kickball, soccer, basketball, tetherball, four square and whatever else we could think of. The sooner you got to school, the more you got to play.
He hit the nail on the head.
That be it. Too much TV, too many video games, obsessive parents who fear the world.
Well, it's reasonable to fear a two ton machine moving 50 mph in the public space and controlled by a complete stranger.
Kids and cars don't mix. And we've decided collectively that cars are more important.
When I was a kid (I graduated from high school in the mid-1980s, so it wasn’t all THAT long ago) we spent most summer days outside playing sports from morning to dinner time. Spring and fall were even better for weekend evenings, though — because when it got dark around 7:00 PM it was perfect for playing “manhunt” and causing all kinds of mischief in the neighborhood before getting home at a reasonable hour.
Bingo. I've had people come to my door to hassle me because my little boys (8, 6, 4) go to the playground within sight of our house "alone."
I watch them cross the street, so they don't stop to fight in the middle of it and get hit by a truck.
***juvenile obesity epidemic can be reversed by significantly expanding welfare programs***
My observations suggest that kids on welfare tend to be the fattest, along with their mommas.
More food stamps for all!
There you have it folks; the poor in America are fat and lazy. . .so let's give them more money.
Genuinely poor people, like the kind I saw in places like Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe would all be very confused how one manages to be in poverty and yet still be fat and "inactive." They would not understand it and they would think it was a joke. . .well, it is a joke. . .and the joke is on the U.S. taxpayer.
While exercise is good for turning fat to muscle, it is no good for weight reduction. The bottom line is that the body is *supposed* to turn good nutrition into fat. So it has all sorts of mechanisms to increase weight and defeat weight loss.
Males needed more muscle and less fat for hunting and combat, so it is easier for them to lose weight and gain muscle mass. But females need fat to support their immune system while it changes over during pregnancy and after. Sperm actually increases in potency when males are somewhat starved, but females lose fertility when they are somewhat starved.
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