So, Mrs. B. Hussein Obama, Moochelle has hitched her wagon to childhood obesity and the fight against it. She has a point. Kids today are fat and uncoordinated. They spend far too much time with their nose buried in a smart phone or glued to a gaming console. Kids don’t “go outside and play” anymore. Indeed, in a survey from June of this year, fully 71% of today’s American youth would not qualify for military service. In a society where less than one half of one-percent sign up anyway, that is a frightening prospect for our future security.
http://io9.com/more-than-two-thirds-of-american-youth-dont-qualify-for-1597947127
The problem with Moochelle’s plan is that she is attacking the intake end of the issue rather than the activity aspect. She wants to limit the calories kids intake, the sugars, and sodium levels rather than push activity like her program “Let’s Move” suggests. “Children need at least 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity.” Kids need “safe avenues to walk or ride a bike to school”. Schools need to “enhance and expand physical exercise classes, or opening school PE areas in the afternoon and evening for family use.”
http://www.letsmove.gov/get-active
What planet is she living on? What decade is she living in?
When I was in school we had a gym class. It was required. Today, many schools do not even have a gymnasium, let along gym classes or instructors. Budget cuts are one excuse. Physical liability is another. Teachers’ unions want more money from the budgets for salaries and to hire more teachers (who then do less work). Where to find the money? Gym class. Lawyers seek to limit exposure to risk and liability payments for injuries. Since kids are already less active, partaking in rigorous physical activity only means more injuries are likely. Since we already can’t keep our doctor even if we like him, health care coverage is prohibitively expensive. Adding out-lay payments to cover injuries to “fat bodies” trying to do a somersault is ridiculous. Reduce the liability by eliminating the risk—gym class.
If we had gym class as a mandatory part of school, kids would get that recommended time of being active. If it became a core part of the curriculum, meaning you HAD to participate, you’d have less obesity as kids would have to meet minimum standards in order to pass. Imagine failing a grade in school because you failed to do enough sit-ups.
Thinking that schools are going to voluntarily open up facilities for after school activities especially in the evenings for “family exercise” is folly. Over half of American families with children are dual income earning families. Both Mom & Dad are out in the workforce struggling to bring home enough to make ends meet. Often times, with the cost of child care (if the kids are pre-school), or if they select to go to private schools since public education sucks so bad, the extra income earned by the mother being out of the house often times fails to cover the added expenses. It could be one reason why younger married couples are putting off having children for years if having them at all. This could explain the birth rate of Americans falling below the replenishment rate of 2.1. That is another blog topic, though.
http://psych.ku.edu/dennisk/PF642/Dual-Earner%20Couples.htm
The point of the previous paragraph is that after working a full day, few parents are going to want to pack up the kids and go to school to work out. All too often parents are looking to have the school raise their children anyway, but having them exercise their kids was once practice and policy. We should do it again.
Instead, Moochelle is advancing most of her initiative on attacking the dietary habits of kids. Do kids eat too much junk food, drink too much sugar, or ingest too much sodium? Probably. But it would be best examined on a kid-to-kid basis. No two kids have the same metabolic rate so trying to push every kid into a 2000 calorie a day diet isn’t going to have the same outcome across the board.
Many school districts thought they’d found a cash cow generating more income by accepting federal money. They offset was accepting and implementing the new federal guidelines for dietary restrictions. The guidelines restrict sugar and sodium as well as caloric count per item eaten.
For example, a breakfast served by the school for children in Kindergarten through grade 5 has to bed not less than 350 calories but not more than 500. Saturated fat content must be less than 10% with sodium content less than 430 milligrams. Grades 6-8: 400-550 calories, same fat content but 470 milligrams is the threshold for sodium. Grades 9-12: 450-600 calories, same fat, 500 milligrams of sodium. Fruits and grains are where most of the content is to come from and milk is to be the drink served. Period.
Lunch carries many of the same restrictions on calorie count, fat content and allowable sodium. The actual plan by 2022 is for schools to cut sodium levels in offered foods by half. What is the effect?
http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/LAC_03-06-12_0.pdf
Kids are opting out of eating at school. At one school in Wisconsin, 70% of the 830 students boycotted the menu. They were followed by middle schoolers. This reduces the money generated by students buying lunch as well as drastically increases food waste. Another example includes a 6-foot 210-pound high school student who is a lineman on the football team. He can burn as many as 3000 calories during practice. Add in the Advanced Placement classes the lad is in—believe it or not, high speed classes require a higher caloric intake too.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/09/18/high-school-students-boycott-school-cafeteria-over-new-lunch-restrictions/
Given that many “campuses” allow students to leave and return many are. In my neighbor, there are fast food joints and donut shops within a quarter mile.
Lastly, the new restrictions on to menu inevitably raise the cost of the individual meal. Fresh fruits and vegetables versus frozen foods, additional spices to enhance/add flavor versus salt, non-fat or low-fat milk only versus juices, all combine to increase costs. Just like Obamacare—the savings anticipated end up making it more expensive.
This is another in a never ending stream of governmental over-reach. Another example of a program succumbing to the law of unintended consequences. The political elite know better than parents do what their kids need and will regulate how you live/eat/drive/vote/learn in order to make sure you comply with their ideas. It is for your own good, after all. They’re doing this for the kids. That can’t be bad, can it?