Too Much Food in Teens' Diet Is What Is Causing Obesity
"But the survey also found that teens' overall rate of daily exercise had not changed much since 1991, when the study sample was first asked to report their participation in gym classes in school and their level of physical activity at home. The percentage of teens attending daily gym class has stayed relatively steady since 1991; on average, the yearly change in the proportion of students participating was less than 1%. The percentage of ninth- through 12th-graders getting adequate levels of moderate physical activity -- exercise such as slow bicycling, fast walking or pushing a lawn mower, which did not make participants break a sweat -- also changed very little, from 26.7% in 1999 to 26.5% in 2005"
I was just thinking about this recently. My middle daughter is playing basketball. On the days that she practices, she comes home and eats a good meal with a smile. On the days that she doesn't, she picks at her food and snacks the rest of the night on junk food. I came to the conclusion that organized sports and activities really are the best way to get teens exercising and eating right.
Asking our community: Why do you think schools offer physical activity opportunities only for kids who have the talent to entertain with sports games and not just as activities for all teens to promote good health? Do you think the tide will change anytime soon? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
I have 14yr old triplets. THe girl just moved to another school, away from her brothers who are excellent at sport and don’t need any encouragement. She was putting on weight and not doing anything if she could help it! now they have her enlisted in every sport going and she loves it! Go figure! The school is the saint or the culprit! I’m delighted!
Obesity among children ages 12 to 19 — increased from 4.2 percent in 1970 to 15.3 percent in 2000. (Seattle Times 2005) This age group, are the most likely to consume a disproportionate amount of the soft drinks, fruit juice, sports drinks and packaged cookies and other baked goods that are sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS is high in calories and low in nutritional value. It’s use in our foods, especially in convienance foods, continue to rise…so does obesity. Obese children are at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke. This may be the first generation that the children’s life span will be shorter than their parents. How sad is that!
I have a feeling readers might disagree with that last comment about HFCS, but it is correct. The main cause of obesity at any age is what goes in the mouth. School lunches (and unfortunately what parents feed kids too) are full of processed, deep-fat-fried, chemical laden garbage. Look at the processed mystery meat nuggets kids are getting at school along with fries and all of the “a la carte” nutritionless snacks. Kids are taught to eat junk at home and at school and it’s a life-long lesson. Last winter I decided to rid our house of chemicals. We only eat real food now. Nothing processed, no food colors or HFCS or soy lecithen, mono and di-glycerides, carageenan, guar gum, etc. Do you even know what all that crap is or that some of it is made from petroleum and most of it is made from comodity corn? Anyway, I just wanted healthy kids – because they will start dying younger, and spending an extra $1 per day each on food can save $32 per day on health care costs later. This country wouldn’t have a health care crisis if it didn’t have an eating problem. Personally, even though it wasn’t my intention, I’ve lost 25 pounds, my husband cut back on his blood pressure meds, and my 15 year-old doesn’t need her ADHD meds – she just takes a flax oil (omega-3) supplement! Forget about the “fat free” gimics or the “no carbs” diets, just feed your family real food – mostly fruits and vegetables (try to cut back on the factory animals – we only use grass-fed meat now). It takes a few extra minutes on the weekend to plan meals for the week. We buy more expensive food but in total spend less because money isn’t wasted on “sale” food that gets thrown away. Exercise is important for health not weight – take some family hikes on the weekend, go kayaking, bowling, etc. Last, don’t fall for “grain-fed” meat – that means the animal was force-fed corn, which nature didn’t intend it to eat, then it stood in it’s manure feeling sick and miserable so was given antibiotics, then went to slaughter dripping in e coli bacteria. Get some books from the library on real food – you and your kids will learn to eat it and love it!!
The Ameriocan culture glorifies survival of the fittest,”only the fittest organisms will prevail”, threfore structure and systems are built around performance. ambition, talent, and productivity. T
The original meaning of the term pedagogy means to lead the child into their highest good, it is about the strategies of teaching, to create a love of learning. Our system of pedagogy works in direct copposition for those that do not shine in a specific discipline, the process is undermined, superceded by innate ability, talent and acumen.
Also, the media/entertainment does not assist in creating a change in this belief system. The gods and goddesses are worshipped for their perfect bodies which drives teenages to eat more to relieve the pain of not meeting the quinessential.
We must create an environment that is based on the needs of every student, that honors the process of
diligently working in the development of skills in all disciplines. If a adolescent/teenages is made to feel less than because of their lack of skill in gym, sport, physical activity,etc., their self esteem is damaged. Who wants to keep trying at something that makes us feel bad about ourselves? Instead, it feels better to fill ourselves up with sugar and food, at least we are filled in some way!
It is most unfortunate that by the time kids are in middle school, sports are almost always competative, and therefore, many don’t make the cut. Two of my children like the occasional intramural sports offered for six-week intervals, but that all disappears by high school. My competative daughter LIKES sports, but also feels the drag of the all-consuming nature that they take on, including unrelated “team-building” activities, which eat up time that could be spent “family-building.” I, personally, think that offering programs that are so competative and which are geared toward scholarship aspirants, is unsupportive of lesser-ability kids, and also burns out the ones who are competative, but who don’t know just how much they really want to devote to a sport. It seems to be all or nothing.
In order to impact teen obesity, we must set the example as parents of how to lead an overall healthy lifestyle. This includes making healthy choices in 4 main areas: nutrition, exercise, stress management, and sleep. For more information, see my book, “How To Eat Fried Chicken and Be Thin Too” on Amazon or at strategicbookpublishing.com
I have watched my son play organized sports since he was kindergarten age up through his high school years, and what I have observed is sad. The only thing that the coaches are interested in is winning. When I signed my son up to play T-ball at the age of 5, my expectation was that the children would be taught the game and team work, and that everyone would get a chance to play every position. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Even at the tender young age of 5, the kids were never rotated. The pitcher was always the same child, the first baseman was always the same child, and on and on, so only those boys who had fathers who started tossing a ball to them from the time they were 6 months old were allowed to play certain positions. No one was ever given a chance to play other positions. The coach was only interested in winning the game. It stayed like that throughout my son’s years of playing sports. I watched the same boys playing all of the key positions, and the other same boys always watching and waiting from the sidelines, hoping that this time coach would put them in.
Sports are taken too seriously, they are no longer a “game”, the fun is gone.
It’s all about who wins.
Everyone who tries out should be played, and the focus could be on getting the exercise that they need and encouraging one another.