Teach Your Children Well
Written by: Lee Ann Rush
As though the skyrocketing numbers of obese children in the United States aren’t enough to wake us up to the need for immediate and dramatic changes to our overall lifestyle in this country, a sobering statistic cited by online publication PreventDisease.com underscores the urgency we face to drastically alter the current American diet of processed foods, sugar-laden drinks and fast food fare from the Golden Arches and their ilk: “Today, by the time the average child in a developed country turns eight years old, they’ve had more sugar in their lives than the average person did in an entire lifetime just one century ago.” Wow! How are these kids going to help save the planet if they’re too sick to care?
No one disputes the fact that children who have improper diets, eat too much sugar and get too little exercise are at risk for a myriad of health problems and social issues that have the potential to make them miserable and actually shorten their lives. I cringe when I see a mother in the grocery store buying a cart full of sweetened cereals, snack foods, sodas and candy that her overweight kids are whining for. The other night at a baseball game, the family sitting in front of me ate hot dogs, soft pretzels, cotton candy and ice cream while drinking big cups of soda, and then left well before the seventh-inning stretch. No surprise that both the parents and the two children were very heavy. It may be politically incorrect to make this observation, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why. Children learn what they see and experience. Poor diets often translate to obesity. Are these some of the same children who, as we saw in Chef Jamie
Oliver’s well-meant but largely futile attempts to teach young schoolchildren about proper nutrition, can’t tell a fresh tomato from a beet, carrot or a red rubber ball?
Bringing gardening programs into the public schools is one way to enlighten children to more healthy eating and encourage them to develop a taste and appreciation for fresh vegetables and naturally-sweet fruits. Another important step is to severely limit (I’d say eliminate, but as a parent I know how unrealistic that might be) children’s intake of fast food. The bottom line is this: fast food chain fare is of poor quality and that’s why they can sell it for such relatively low prices. To quote Jamie Oliver ‘s view of McDonalds: “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process {washing fatty meat parts in ammonium hydroxide before mixing them into the burger recipe}, is being given to human beings. Why would any sensible human being put meat filled with ammonia in the mouths of their children?”* Why, indeed? Because the FDA says it’s safe? Don’t get me started. The
more I research and write on Green issues, the more I see that being Green has a whole lot to do with being aware, and with using plain old common sense.
*As a result of Oliver’s efforts, McDonalds has, without media fanfare, announced that they have removed ammonium hydroxide from their meat sold in the U.S. McDonalds in the UK never used it; their beef is locally-sourced.
