EvanL
02-24-2004, 10:30 PM
This is another article i wrote. Its on fat kids. ;)
Im thinking of submitting it to an online newspaper.
Recent polls have shown that obesity is rising among children in North America.
How could we have let this happen? Should we blame ourselves? I don’t think we should.
It’s not like we intentionally stuff children full of Crisco and bacon fat in the hopes of
making them more buoyant. The children do it to themselves. They park themselves in
front of the television screen or the computer monitor for hours on end doing the same
thing over and over. Click Click. Click Click. That’s about the only exercise kids these
days get.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have a computer, and neither did many of my friends. And if
they did they never used them. We would spend our time outdoors playing cops and
robbers, or cowboys and Indians. We would do this for hours on end. And when we
weren’t shooting each other with invisible bullets and arrows, we would put our heads
together and build stuff. Tree forts, wooden swords, wooden guns, bike ramps,
skateboard ramps, rafts. You know, stuff that requires effort. And none of these things
came in boxes with colourful instructions. We would build it with our own hands,
without the proper parental consent which is always advised these days of course. But
that was because we were cool. Whenever we needed to get somewhere we would walk,
and if we needed to get there fast we would run. We would never take the bus, or worse
yet have our mothers drop us off. We would spend whole days out and about on our
bikes, and not come home until supper time. We would come back with our clothes torn
and our legs and hands cut open. We would immediately be doused from head to toe with
hydrogen peroxide by our mothers because god knows what we were touching or rolling
around in. Our beds would be filled with sand and dirt, and our sheets stained by all the
open wounds we had acquired. But we wouldn’t care, because we had fun. We would
wake up the next day and do the same thing all over again.
At school during recess we would organize games of tag or dodge ball. In some schools
now they have even banned dodge ball, saying how it’s unfair because the stronger kids
will pick on the younger ones. Well nuts to them! It’s a great way for kids to get exercise,
and it beats them taking their aggression out in other ways.
Now on to the subject of nutrition. Kids these days spend their time between meals eating
junk food. Now there’s nothing wrong with junk food, but when you combine it with
laziness, it can become fatal. Junkfood+lazyness=obesity=heart attack. I remember I
would eat potato chips and candy nonstop plus my three meals of the day, and I was
nowhere near obese. In fact my parents were more scared of me being skinny than they
were worried about me becoming fat. It’s probably because I was always running around
playing and would burn off any of the calories I would have consumed.
It has become very disconcerting that kids nowadays would rather spend their free time
indoors staring at flashing lights on screens, than spend it outdoors taking advantage of
mother earth and all its beauty. After all, who knows how much longer we will be able to
say this for. Schools should have mandatory after school exercise programs for kids, and
the cafeterias should serve nutritious meals, instead of twinkies and hotdogs. This could
help curve the problem of child obesity. Countries like Finland have already started doing
this, and it is showing. If the Finns can do it, how come we in North America can’t?
After all, who is ultimately responsible for this? Society as a whole can take some
responsibility for this. We are the ones that should encourage exercise and good nutrition,
not leave it up to the child. Children are the future, but what will the future be without
children.
Im thinking of submitting it to an online newspaper.
Recent polls have shown that obesity is rising among children in North America.
How could we have let this happen? Should we blame ourselves? I don’t think we should.
It’s not like we intentionally stuff children full of Crisco and bacon fat in the hopes of
making them more buoyant. The children do it to themselves. They park themselves in
front of the television screen or the computer monitor for hours on end doing the same
thing over and over. Click Click. Click Click. That’s about the only exercise kids these
days get.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have a computer, and neither did many of my friends. And if
they did they never used them. We would spend our time outdoors playing cops and
robbers, or cowboys and Indians. We would do this for hours on end. And when we
weren’t shooting each other with invisible bullets and arrows, we would put our heads
together and build stuff. Tree forts, wooden swords, wooden guns, bike ramps,
skateboard ramps, rafts. You know, stuff that requires effort. And none of these things
came in boxes with colourful instructions. We would build it with our own hands,
without the proper parental consent which is always advised these days of course. But
that was because we were cool. Whenever we needed to get somewhere we would walk,
and if we needed to get there fast we would run. We would never take the bus, or worse
yet have our mothers drop us off. We would spend whole days out and about on our
bikes, and not come home until supper time. We would come back with our clothes torn
and our legs and hands cut open. We would immediately be doused from head to toe with
hydrogen peroxide by our mothers because god knows what we were touching or rolling
around in. Our beds would be filled with sand and dirt, and our sheets stained by all the
open wounds we had acquired. But we wouldn’t care, because we had fun. We would
wake up the next day and do the same thing all over again.
At school during recess we would organize games of tag or dodge ball. In some schools
now they have even banned dodge ball, saying how it’s unfair because the stronger kids
will pick on the younger ones. Well nuts to them! It’s a great way for kids to get exercise,
and it beats them taking their aggression out in other ways.
Now on to the subject of nutrition. Kids these days spend their time between meals eating
junk food. Now there’s nothing wrong with junk food, but when you combine it with
laziness, it can become fatal. Junkfood+lazyness=obesity=heart attack. I remember I
would eat potato chips and candy nonstop plus my three meals of the day, and I was
nowhere near obese. In fact my parents were more scared of me being skinny than they
were worried about me becoming fat. It’s probably because I was always running around
playing and would burn off any of the calories I would have consumed.
It has become very disconcerting that kids nowadays would rather spend their free time
indoors staring at flashing lights on screens, than spend it outdoors taking advantage of
mother earth and all its beauty. After all, who knows how much longer we will be able to
say this for. Schools should have mandatory after school exercise programs for kids, and
the cafeterias should serve nutritious meals, instead of twinkies and hotdogs. This could
help curve the problem of child obesity. Countries like Finland have already started doing
this, and it is showing. If the Finns can do it, how come we in North America can’t?
After all, who is ultimately responsible for this? Society as a whole can take some
responsibility for this. We are the ones that should encourage exercise and good nutrition,
not leave it up to the child. Children are the future, but what will the future be without
children.