obesity for all ages
Here’s a shocker from MSNBC.com:
Obesity rising sharply among preschoolers
More than 10 percent of children ages 2 to 5 are overweight, the American Heart Association reported Thursday.
I feel fortunate to have grown up at a time when children could play outside more or less safely and when playing outside in dry weather was the expected thing. My mother is a fabulous cook, so we always had good meals. Mom often served desserts and cookies were usually available. But the meals were healthy and the cookie jar wasn’t available to us 24/7. No doubt we burned off our cookies by riding our bikes, climbing trees, and otherwise fooling around outside. We never had potato chips and that kind of junk in the house, and it was a very special treat when Mom or Dad would bring home a six-pack of 7-Up, and we all got to have one.
Of course, we had to participate in gym class at school. I hated every minute because it was usually oriented around team sports. I was always awful at team sports because they require hand-to-eye coordination, and I ain’t got any.
In junior high, when we got into calisthenics, I was reborn. That was something I could do. (Only the softball throw kept me from getting a President’s Physical Fitness patch, or whatever the thing was called.)
Ditto summer track programs, ditto jogging, ditto weight training, which I discovered in college.
The only point to this soliloquy is that I feel sorry for kids who grow up with a steady diet of junk food, passive entertainment in front of the TV, no gym class, no opportunity to discover their own physicality. The odds are against them growing up lean.
