Question 33. my fat child

Dear 21st Century Dad, my thirteen year old is getting fat. I leave magazine articles in the bathroom about obesity. I turn up the radio louder when the newscaster talks about food addictions. I have the hardest time getting her up off of her butt. The weather is too wet, too cold, too hot or too cloudy.

And her friends, at least the ones she’s picked, are the same way. Don’t kids exercise anymore? What do I do?

Dear Why is Moderation So Boring?

If we divert all the money we blow on weight loss programs into food programs for the starving, we can narrow some bellies and widen a few million needy ones. Don’t we already know this? Do we really need another new diet program? It’s almost like being a teenager never stops. Why do we need parental figures and doctors and epidemiologists and dieticians and government health care and marketing consultants to tell us the bad things that will happen to us if we continue to overfeed? Aren’t we ever going to grow up?

Our governments have produced new food guides and have promised to table more legislation and write more regulations about what we should and what we shouldn’t eat, about how much and how little we eat, and when and where we can eat. (Those finger waggling parents again!)

How’s this for a futuristic healthy food and exercise scenario? Our school children spend triple the amount of school time on physical education. Play therapists out-revenue plastic surgeons. Legislation bans legal suits for schoolyard injuries. Ergonomists miniaturize movement enhanced computer workstations. Direction propelled conveyor sidewalks triple in width, allowing fast trackers an inside speedway. Corporations ban ties. Street games make the Olympics. (Hondurus wins Kick the Can, and for a threepeat, the Inuits take the Blanket Toss.) Lawns are edible, and for lunch, we can’t decide whether to eat lunch at school cafeteria with our kid, or the fast food counter at the local grocer’s vegetable aisle. Every year, we walk to a new country. We think that eating less and moving more is the best medical innovation since hand washing before and after surgery. Government statisticians estimate the tax loss on the illegal hamburger market is 7 Billion dollars.

Google:
1. Inuit Blanket Toss (in both Web and Images)
2. Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide - Main Page
3. Investing in Sport Participation (Education predicts sport involvement. The most significant dividing point is between secondary school graduates and people who did not complete secondary school.)
4. F as in Fat 2006: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2006
5. Tackling Child Obesity—First Steps British Parliament recommendations
6. Sportfit Welcome Page> at http://www.sportfitcanada.com
7. BBC NEWS | Magazine | My wartime menu (add more fruits and vegetables)
8. 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change