Inertia at the Top – washingtonpost.com
The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter — ate more, sat more — and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government. The sense of this as a national health priority just doesn’t come through,” said Jeffrey P. Koplan of Emory University, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chairman of the Institute of Medicine’s 2004 study of childhood obesity. The top recommendation of that seminal report was for the government to convene a high-level, interdepartmental task force to guide a coordinated response. No such body has been assembled.
Contrast that with the offensive mounted in European countries: France mandated health warnings on televised food ads. Spanish officials reached agreement with industry leaders on tighter product labeling and marketing as well as reducing fat, salt and sugar in processed foods. Britain has gone the farthest, restricting food ads on TV programs catering predominantly to children and pulling sweets and sweetened drinks from schools. Eighty-five percent of all grades have at least two hours of physical education a week. The 2011 goal is five hours. The first signs of trouble appeared in the late 1970s as rates of overweight that had been relatively stable for years started to rise. In retrospect, they were reflecting societal, technological and policy shifts that would turn the youngest generation into the heaviest to date.
Blaming this on the government is just a cop-out. At the same time, government is not really interested in anything that discourages consumerism either. So what has changed in the last 30 years? Fast food was certainly around when I was a kid; we just didn’t have the disposable income to eat it everyday. And what is with 2 hours of physical education a week? We had phys ed every day and when we got home from school, we couldn’t wait to go outside and play. Do I sound like a Cranky Geek yet?
#33. right on. take responsibility for yourself and your own kids. I agree that the government should encourage healthy eating and exercise (healthy school lunches, food pyramid, bike lanes, gym class at public schools, etc), but the gummint only has its hands on the kids 6 hours a day, 9 mos a year.
Its what are they doing the rest of the time that really matters.