[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
CA: I don’t disagree with your last statement, but I want to point out that, medically speaking, it DOES benefit one to eat properly and exercise.
My remarks about diet and exercise weren’t meant to single out overweight people. However, as a youth coach, I will tell you that kids nowadays ARE, generally speaking, more likely to be overweight and, more importantly, out of shape. They tend to be more sedentary than we were as kids (I’m 44, so we’re talking about growing up during the 1970s) and tend to eat more and more poorly, both in terms of volume and dietary choices.
Obesity in this country is endemic, and especially among the youth. Saying that is not a condemnation of overweight people, but it does underscore that, as a nation, we’re doing a pretty crappy job of looking after our health and our children’s health.
Add the reduction or elimination of PE and physical fitness programs at the elementary and middle school levels and you now have the whipsaw effect of overworked parents feeding their kids McDonalds due to time constraints and the kids not getting a decent amount of physical exercise as part of a daily routine.
The effects are pernicious, and a simple glance at the skyrocketing rates of juvenile diabetes supports this statement. When you look at the data and start targeting groups like kids from single parent families, or minorities, or lower end socio-economic backrounds/geographies, it becomes even more glaring.[/quote]
We are in total agreement about this, Allan. If you read my post, I never said obesity/overweight was healthy…quite the contrary, it is absolutely unhealthy. It’s just that I think too many people focus on it as if it’s the primary cause of illness and/or accidents, and that’s simply not true. There are many other risk factors, and I’ll bet if we examined the lives of everyone who railed against “obesity,” we’d find risk factors (genetics, lifestyle, hobbies, occupations, etc.) that are just as detrimental to their health. Like meadandale said above, we need to protect everyone’s rights, or next thing we know, there will be no one there to protect the rights that we hold dear.
As someone who also grew up in the 70s, it saddens me to see how our kids are forced to grow up these days. Back in the day, we left the house after breakfast and didn’t return home until the street lights came on. All day long, we’d be riding our bikes, climing trees, building forts (no land left for that anymore!), etc. with all the other kids in the neighborhood, with nary a parent to be found anywhere. If we watched TV, we had to get up to turn the dial on the TV! Remember that? 😉 I think our generation was one of the last “lucky” generations where we still had some freedoms (no bike helmets, we could ride in the back of a pickup truck and watch the stars above us, no electronic leashes, etc.). Great times! 🙂
