" Could Less be More"?

The May 14th edition of Newsweek has a powerful article on how obese Americans are getting. The cover shows a fat baby (most are) holding a big box of French fries with the caption: "When I grow up, I'm going to weigh 300lbs!  Help!" Help indeed.

Look, all of us know obesity has become a big (no pun intended) issue in this country and is growing (no pun intended) each year. Health issues abound with the growth in girth. The article points to all the "usual suspects" carbohydrates, salt intake, larger sized meals, chemicals in processed food and so forth. It did take aim at one usually left out culprit and that is sugar. Fructose and every other form of sugar is simply no good for us. When was the last time you ever heard a doctor say: now, make sure you have a spoonful of sugar every night before bedtime. No doubt all of these food maladies are at the heart of the growing, and growing problem. (Pun intended) However I contend our tech culture and sick society are as much to blame.

When I was growing up in Nebraska, I would leave the house after having had a bowl of cereal with the admonishment to be back for lunch. After a lunch (a sandwich and some Kool-Aid) back out we went until it got dark which meant dinner time. I would be outside playing sports, running around, probably no less than 6-8 hours a day virtually every day in summer and on weekends. We'd play baseball for 3 hours at a stretch, basketball for a couple of hours and so forth. I was not a fat kid. None of the kids I played with were fat. In fact I think one reason I have had good health all my life is the unprocessed food I ate, and the amount of fresh air and exercise I got.

Not so today because two things converged at the same time somewhere in the late seventies to early eighties and that was the advent of technology related devices like video games combined with the fear parents had about letting kids outdoors. We seemed to be a an era (then) of increased child abductions, child murders, kids’ faces on milk cartons (meant they had disappeared) and paranoid parents everywhere. The fact is there were instances where kids were snatched right off their doorsteps and murdered. Add to that fear the hysteria about child abusers on every street corner, and parents decided they needed to watch their kids more closely, all the time. They decided maybe kids needed to entertain themselves "indoors". 

I first began to notice how weird things were when I saw that parents had their kids tethered to them (literally) outdoors and that they never let them out of their sight. Hyper worried parents plus the availability of Nintendo, and Sega Genesis and other video games meant kids now stayed indoors, sat on their keisters and played games for hours. Kids had play dates at Chucky Cheese which meant more video games. Every kid in America had to have their own TV in their bedroom and that meant even more hours of TV watching. If you told them to "go out and play" they looked at you with a puzzled "what do you mean" look. There weren't very many friends outside to play with. It was easier for parents to doing their kid-hovering indoors.

As these kids grew up their attention was diverted to IPods, IPhones, Video rentals, CD players, and camcorders. The sitting generation grew up sitting more than ever. If they didn't go into sports they became couch potatoes. What is the cheapest food you can serve your kids? That's right crap in the form of: happy meals, Kraft macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and so forth. These foods tasted great, kids didn't complain and they were easy to  prepare (Re: microwave). Since single parents and in a lot of cases both parents worked; eating dinner at home became very problematical (it took 2 parents working to afford the 3500 square foot home, 2 cars, the boat, TV's in every room). The thinking was, I'm too tired to make a nutritious dinner at home so I'll stop by KFC on the way home and get dinner. That’s right some fried chicken, mashed potatoes and a biscuit for my kid that has been sitting on his/her behind all day.

Don't think the fast food chains didn't notice the change in parenting models. Suddenly there were toys in every kid's meal. Hell, the kids would eat the crap for the toy and the toy kept the kid quiet. It seemed a Win-Win for everyone except, of course, for the kids growing up in a sedentary lifestyle that would be next to impossible for them to break away from and simultaneously make them health risks. It was a perfect confluence of many separate, individual bad ideas at once. It's true a parent did have to be careful of where their kids were, although not nearly to the extent most parents (including me) thought and it was true that you were tired as a single parent, or 2 parents working and you did cut corners on quality of food etc. It wasn't 100% the parents fault. Not much worked in parents favors in those days. Having said that, let's be honest many parents were self-centered and copped out on quality time with their kids, and copped out on making sure their kid(s) had nutritional meals.

Humans need to move; early man didn't survive in a Darwinian world by being sedentary. I think the proliferation of health clubs, and fitness centers are because most people want to feel fit and healthy. Why else would a person run in place on a stationary tread mill (think about what a "tread mill" is the very essence of going nowhere) except stupidity or a desire to be healthier and fitter? 

We need better food, we smaller proportions, we need to be outdoors, we need safer streets so our kids can be outdoors, we need to limit access to technology that promote sitting. We need to quit making food our comfort. Food should only make you happy if you are really hungry and eating relieves a sense that you are going to starve. Food isn't our friend, our consolation, our salvation, or our deliverance. Don't buy another electronic device until you first spend money on a fitness club membership and every night you sit watching TV balance it with another night where you go do something physical. 

We are an anxious nation of over worriers, compulsive personalities that are bored senseless, just killing time and ourselves in the process. We have to get with it, we have to get moving and raise the next generation to believe running a mile is better for them than killing 100 people on the 3d version of "The U.S. Conquers the World” video game. Please if you are under 40 years of age, don't let you or your kids end up on the cover of Newsweek 20 years from now as the person they warned us about".