« it's just plain | Main | i feel slightly sorry for those of you »
October 26, 2003
a very disturbing trend
in the US in particular is the way that we are feeding our children. An article on Yahoo News describes how children between the ages of four and 24 months are eating alarming amounts of french fries and soda pop.
"French fries are the most popular vegetable eaten by children 19 to 24 months old," researcher Dr. Kathleen Reidy said at an American Dietetic Association conference. "Twenty to 25 percent of these kids did not eat a single healthy vegetable on the day of the survey, and 25 to 30 percent did not eat a single fruit."
The article goes on to talk about how infants as young as seven months are being fed soda pop in their bottles.
It just makes my jaw drop. And when I see fat kids, I mean fat LITTLE kids under the age of five, I can't understand it. I sort of look at it as akin to a form of abuse--these are kids who don't buy their own food, they don't make decisions about their health, they don't have a sense of what is good or bad for them--their parents are the only ones who can control this. And they don't, subjecting their kids to a childhood of verbal and potentially physical harm by other kids who taunt and tease them; significant impact to their child's self-esteem and how they view their own bodies and subsequently relationships; and worst of all, they put their children in the hands of potential health complications, including higher rates of cancer, diabetes, heart problems, etc. I can't understand how any parent who really loves their child would ever put them in harm's way like this. Amazing.
My parents being here this last week was fairly eye-opening to me. It was very disturbing to me that when we went to restaraunts, my father and I would invariably end up ordering the same thing (or wanting to...I often would switch my order after I realized it). I have always known I was cut from the same mold, but that was eerie. The main bad habit was dessert after every meal. Joe could never understand my affinity for dessert--why I view it as sort of a right rather than something for a special occasion. I think he gets it now. It was pretty obvious where I got that bad habit. It's interesting to me, how much my parents have influenced my eating. I never really ate seafood or fish until I came to live in New England. My parents don't eat any sort of seafood or fish unless it's shrimp...or tuna. The other thing is, they don't want to TRY anything. My father was adamant that he hated calamari. After we talked more about it, we discovered that it wasn't fried calamari, which of course is very different. It took my in-laws prodding him to try it and he liked it, as I knew he would. Other things they wouldn't try at all. It was funny, being in the reverse position, the child trying to get the parent to eat something!
But for all the bad habits I acquired, I was still a skinny child up until high school. We didn't sit in front of the TV playing video games all day (we had some Atari time in the evening, usually with dad, but not all day, and we never were allowed to have a TV in our bedroom). We played outside, we were active, and they at least tried to get us to eat vegetables. Aside from not being the weight I want to be at, I have always been pretty healthy--good blood pressure, strong heart, decent cholesterol (olive oil and garlic are diet mainstays now). One really awesome thing about my parents being here is that my awareness of food and activity and health is sticking with me...I even managed to lose a pound while they were here, despite not eating as well as I should and skipping a week at the gym.
Every time I see one of those fat kids, I feel a mixture of pity, sadness, disgust and fear, but mostly anger. Anger at those parents who are putting the lives of their own kids in jeopardy.
Posted by crystallyn at October 26, 2003 09:58 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.crystallyn.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/140