Childhood Obesity^©

I heard on the radio that Pepsi will, in a few years, stop selling its products in schools in a bunch of countries. From what I understood, the reason for Pepsi’s decision is to help reduce child obesity. I would have liked to be able to drink a Pepsi at lunch time when I was in school. When I was in elementary school and high school, the only way a student could get a Pepsi or Coke on school property was to visit the concession stand during a basketball game.

I cannot speak about lunches currently served in public schools, but when I was in school, it was not possible to gain weight on the school lunches. Some students would trade food with other students to get more of what they liked. It was against the rules to trade food. Few students were willing to trade their sweet food such as pie, cake, ice cream, brownie, etc. Liver was always available for trading, but almost no one wanted to trade for liver. Most of the students would give away their liver instead of requiring a trade for it.

I had a friend that forced the making of another cafeteria rule. It was “You could not drink the vinegar that was on the table for the turnip greens.” My friend liked the taste of apple cider vinegar. There was something wrong with his taste buds. He would pour the vinegar into his empty milk cup and chug-a-lug the vinegar. He was caught drinking the vinegar a couple of times which led to the rule. After the rule was made, his friends would help him get the vinegar by blocking the view of the teacher that was monitoring the lunch room. Sometimes a friend would swap milk cups and pour vinegar into the cup and trade it back. The teacher would be watching him and not the other students. Sometimes he would eat his turnip greens and another student that did not like turnip greens would give theirs to him. He would then pour lots of vinegar on the new serving of turnip greens. The monitor would not do anything to him, because he was correctly pouring vinegar on the turnip greens. He would drink the vinegar with a spoon while looking like he was eating the turnip greens.

I am not PC oriented so I will use an old time word which is “fat.” From my experience, a fat child or teenager had fat parents. Over the years, I have found that fat parents did not mean that their children would be fat while in elementary or high school. It was a good bet that children of fat parents would be fat when they became adults. The problem seems to be caused by furniture such as couches, TVs, video game controllers, and dining tables.

I understand that there are some people that are fat due to physical problems that require medical attention to help control the person’s size. This is not the problem most people have in getting bigger or fatter. The non medical fat people have to assume responsibility for their size. A person gets fat by eating more calories than their body burns up. The person has to reduce the calories he eats or exercise more to burn up more calories. The answer is simple, but it is not easy to reduce a person’s weight. Why are children getting fat a federal government problem? The problem typically is at home with the children’s parents. The members of Congress should have more important things to consider rather than dealing with what children eat at home. It is a parent problem.

Children often reflect their parent’s attitude, values, activities, etc. so why don’t social agencies that care about children force parents to take responsibility for their children. Have you ever noticed the size of many employees of government agencies?

Dale “The Saint” Lee

A former resident of Pot Neck, Tennessee

Date last modified, March 22, 2010

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