When I was in high school (graduated in 97) all the “cool” kids ate out of the vending machines for lunch. My standard lunch was a Coke, a candy bar, and a bag of chips. (I weighed about a hundred pounds until I got out of college, though - high metabolism.) Only the poor kids ate in the cafeteria. Kids who brought their own lunches often ate out of the vending machines to be cool like us. 
I’m all for banning junk food from schools, it’s a no brainer to me.
But I’d set up some incentives too. I’m thinking if you enter high school within weight targets, you get a school voucher for club memberships, like gyms and the Y, or some such thing. Enter college within weight targets, get 2 pts off the interest rate on your loans. Graduate college within targets and get $1000 against your loan.
You could even go the other way, if your kid is over the target weight, all costs for physical participation in sports, for instance is tax deductible. So, if they want to play hockey, or tennis, or gymnastics, you get to deduct all, or some, of the expense.
The gyms and exercise areas are great and definately a major part of the solution. But you’re going to have to seriously motivate people to use them. Just telling them that they’re fat and it’s unhealthy isn’t going to cut it. IME, people like being sedentary and exercise is hard.
Around once a month I get a request to install a printer at someone’s desk because it’s so far to walk across the room to get a printout off the department network printer.
Make cars pedal powered.
Make televisions pedal powered.
Make computers pedal powered.
Y’know, you’re right. Perhaps I was being overly hasty when I said that making gym membership tax-deductible would be a good thing. Heck, if the local Bally Total Fitness gyms are any indication, a lot of people will show up just to next to nothing – or worse, just to use the hot tub or lounge on the pool chairs. (That latter bit is amazing. I almost never see anybody using the pools, and yet I consistently see several folks stretched out on the pool chairs or relaxing in the whirlpool baths. Even when people are in the pool, they’re usually wading or paddling rather than doing any actual swimming.)
Also correct. Now, I think we both know that gym work doesn’t have to be boring or repetitive. However, your typical couch potato – or indeed, many people who are still above the sedentary level – will tend to think of exercise as being boring and monotonous. It’s a testimony to the general populace’s ignorance about fitness in general.
I agree with what projammer said. People like being sedentary, and they tend to think of exercise as being a chore. That’s what modern society has done to people.
I believe the Khmere Rouge had an idea.
First, takeover all farms, factory or not, and commandeer all food supplies. Kill all who resist.
Herd everyone out of the cities, and into the rural areas. Kill all who resist. Have everyone plant crops the old fashioned way, without tractors, with rakes and hoes, and plows drawn by teams of people. Ration out the commandeered food until crops come in.
Everyone will be skinny in no time.
Exercise is going to need a marketing team. Sell it as free transportation (and make sure the infrastructure is there to bike/walk to work, the store, etc.). Sell it as a social activity. Stop calling it a “work out” and just build in exercise as a part of life. I know for myself, I find shoving weights around in the gym incredibly boring. So I found myself a circus class. I love it so much I really, really wish I could afford to take 2 or 3 classes a week. Actually, if I were queen of the universe and had unlimited funds, I’d build a circus-equipped gym in my own home, I love it that much. I actually have a little definition in my abs now, for the first time in my life.
Elementary and junior high PE class needs to be a lot more personalized. Not everyone is going to like flag football or track. You’re going to have to work with students to find things they DO find fun, that they can then take with them for the rest of their lives. (And frankly, do something about bullying so group activities CAN be fun.)
Just walking everywhere makes a huge difference. My first semester in college, I unintentionally lost 15 pounds. I didn’t change my eating habits (and I still had no idea how to eat back then) or start working out. I was just walking everywhere to get from dorm to class, to cafeteria, to studio/lab, to dorm.
These attitudes, whether “exercise is a chore” or “cross country is fun!” starts early in life. We need to surround kids with people who think that activities that involve moving are fun.
I was a sophomore in high school 15 years ago (god it hurts to type that). We had no vending machines at our school, no fast food, and we weren’t allowed to leave campus for lunch. You either brought your own food or ate at the cafeteria. Seemed like half the school just skipped lunch (including me) because it was seen as “nerdy” to bring your own, and the cafeteria food was disgusting.
I graduated 16 years ago. We had a small store that was open during lunch hours that sold candy, but no soda. The soda machines were kept under lock and key until after school hours. We had no fast food at school (although lunches weren’t the healthiest), and only seniors could leave campus for lunch.
Not going to “solve” anything, but for a long time now I’ve wanted to see all those treadmills and stationary bikes get hooked up to the power grid. Imagine the incentive for people to hit the gym if their utility account was credited for all the electricity they flow back onto the power grid…
I wish it were that simple when you have kids. It is either going to cost me a fortune in home gym equipment or child care. That’s money I don’t have.
We do focus at home on healthy foods, though. Since the little’uns arrived, we have forced ourselves to eat healthier (for their sakes) and I am down 15 pounds or so (without a conscious change in activity level, though my life has certainly changed). Both of them are healthy food nuts when we go shopping (very embarassing when they point to things in other shoppers’ carts and say ‘that’s not healthy’ with a disappointed headshake) and they love talking about what food groups are in dinner and understand what treats are.
But the reality is, I have struggled with food my whole life and have educated myself and don’t want my kids to have the same problems.
It is going to take personal responsibility at home to solve the obesity problem. This is not something that your average person is going to do.
So, if I had absolute power I would just put a restriction on junk food. People are only allowed to purchase 1 small serving per day (you can save them up for occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving). That means that fast food places would have to either drastically alter their menus or shut down.
I would provide free parenting nutrition classes to new parents with a review session five years in and a contact should you need help. The classes would teach the basics such as food groups and cooking healthy meals (to include packing healthy lunches). There would also be a cookbook provided of simple, healthy meals and a website where new meals could be posted (after being reviewed).
I also agree with a simpler counting system for nutrition (I am liking the ‘just count the food groups’ strategy mentioned above thread). If you make it so a five year old can understand it and make structured rules, they will get in the game and help us parents along.
One hypothesis explaining the obesity epidemic is that “back in the day”, many housholds had a stay-at-home wife/mother. One of her main duties was supervising the food consumed by everyone in the family. Now that Mom works, breakfasts are often hectic, if existent (I know I was left to make my own growing up), lunches are often not brought from home, and dinners are often let’s-pick-up-a-pizza affairs.
I wonder if anyone has done a study showing if the presence of a stay-at-home parent makes a difference on overall family health.
There’s no solution. You can’t force people to change their lifestyles. We’ve gone far enough in that direction as it is in the last couple decades, IMO, and yet there are more fat adults, children, and diabetics than ever.
The only thing I support is to stop subsidizing the American corn industry, crap convenience foods, etc. And of course stop integrating them into our school systems!
We learned that apples contain mostly fructose (very bad in any but small amounts), water, some fiber and an inconsequential amount of nutrients easily found in other foods that don’t contain fructose. If you eat the skin and directly underneath it - peeled apples, such as those found in fruit salad, have almost no nutrients at all.
I wouldn’t say apples are ‘bad’ but they aren’t ‘good for you’ either.
OK, that does it. If someone put me in charge, I’d do away entirely with this mentality that something is “good” one minute and “bad” the next. Eggs, shrimp, etc. and now apples. They’re food, people.
I agree in part - most real, fresh foods we’ve been eating for many generations are not harmful. But it’s not unreasonable to evaluate foods in terms of their actual nutritional content. Since I have access to detailed information about all foods, if I want fruit I choose (frozen - fresh are too expensive) berries over apples because they have more nutrients and antioxidants, and much less fructose.
Apples aren’t bad. Fructose is actually even good - in reasonable quantities. Everything in moderation.
Look, ancient humans ate a high-fiber, high complex carbohydrate diet. There was no junk food (as we know it now), BGH, GMO grain, pesticides, Roundup, etc. And, very, very few people lead a sedentary lifestyle. So take a step back from processed foods - no Lunchables (blech!), no jello, no Oreos and step towards historical food - stews that began as raw ingredients, cauliflower without the cheesy sauce and food that isn’t breaded and deep-fried. Make a blueberry cobbler for dessert instead of buying a frozen Sara Lee dessert. Or just have fruit and cheese.
You don’t have to change your habits all at once (as I did for digestion reasons) but ‘real food’ tastes great once you lose some of the high-salt, unpronouncable ingredient stuff you find in the frozen food aisle. And splurge on organic veggies. The taste is far superior to the stuff most supermarkets pass off as produce. Really, I learned. It’s not tough.
Now - I’ll admit that I am overweight but after this huge lifestyle change I have more energy than I have had in years, others rave about my cooking and I have gone down a clothing size. I’m working on more, but it’s slow. One step at a time.
Yep. I graduated in 1995, and with the exception of a juice machine, the vending machines in the student areas (but not the ones in the teachers’ room) didn’t turn on until the last bell rang. Even seniors weren’t allowed to leave campus, and we sure as hell didn’t have fast food kiosks in schools like some places do now.
I graduated the same year. We didn’t have soda vending machines, but we did have juice machines (however juice is actually worse than soda, by ounce).
What was bad was the after-school concession stand. Soda, chips, candy…everything a teenager thrives on.
I don’t know if the answer is to ban those kinds of things, though. People need to know how to eat in moderation. If you make certain foods “forbidden”, you give them a mystique that makes them even more desireable.
Strap the kids in a stroller and take them with you. Or get one of those sling thingies. Like I said, I know it’s not simple, but it’s not impossible. I mean, how do women with young kids in third world countries manage to walk miles every day to get water at the pump? They somehow manage. Why can’t we?
That’s the thing: it’s not going to the bin (they directly do not take the fries and put them in the little cardboard thingee), and I’m not being overcharged - the combo is cheaper than “sandwich and soda”.