Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.
Basic human physiology & nutrition in schools
Options
Replies
-
I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO0 -
dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Admittedly, I lived the takeout way for three years without gaining back more than a few of the pounds I had lost. A calculator and the internet for nutrition information is all that was needed for me to keep my calories in check. Both are on my phone. It was still atrociously expensive, by comparison. However, it was worth the convenience to me, as I was working 14-16 hours per day for most of that time.1 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Where does it say that they are bad at maths? I for one ever said that. Merely pointed out that maths and economics can be a perfect part of a cooking class as it involves calculus and buying from an economic chain.0 -
dutchandkiwi wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Where does it say that they are bad at maths? I for one ever said that. Merely pointed out that maths and economics can be a perfect part of a cooking class as it involves calculus and buying from an economic chain.
The " The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper" part would indicate that they are terrible at math.
2 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Where does it say that they are bad at maths? I for one ever said that. Merely pointed out that maths and economics can be a perfect part of a cooking class as it involves calculus and buying from an economic chain.
The " The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper" part would indicate that they are terrible at math.
No it would not indicate that. I could easily indicate a number of things or even all. Being bad at maths is not something that I implied, nor stated That conclusion is totally on your shoulders and I reject it as something that is implied or can be concluded from my post. No smiley will change that0 -
dutchandkiwi wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Where does it say that they are bad at maths? I for one ever said that. Merely pointed out that maths and economics can be a perfect part of a cooking class as it involves calculus and buying from an economic chain.
None of the calculus classes I had would be needed to shop for or cook food. Do you mean calculations, like basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?1 -
Packerjohn wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »dutchandkiwi wrote: »I think I was taught the basics in elementary school but yes I was mostly taught about the food from my mum (who beleives every new snippet of food 'news' out there) and from what we had at home. That is what stuck and that is what has been hardest to unlearn. That combined with growing up in a family where sports was not really a focus. Kids learn from the examples set really.
However I do think that cooking skills should be part of the curriculum These days people often think that it takes lots of time and vegetables and healthy foods are expensive. The think that some form of take away/eating is faster and cheaper. A cookign lesson can be part of maths, science, nutrintion/health and economics. Perfect IMO
So, not only are they bad at cooking, but basic math as well, eh?
Where does it say that they are bad at maths? I for one ever said that. Merely pointed out that maths and economics can be a perfect part of a cooking class as it involves calculus and buying from an economic chain.
None of the calculus classes I had would be needed to shop for or cook food. Do you mean calculations, like basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?
Where I live, that would be grade 3 ot 4 math. Tops. Cooking and shopping might be a fun way to teach early elementary math (or later remedial math) but that's about it.0 -
I had a nutrition class in high school. We figured out that pizza is pretty much a perfect food according to the old food pyramid which was the foundation for the class. The problem with teaching nutrition is that it's a conflict of interest with the cafeteria catering companies and Big Ag's control of school lunch nutrition guidelines which make pizza a vegetable. Guess what...money wins.1
-
I had a nutrition class in high school. We figured out that pizza is pretty much a perfect food according to the old food pyramid which was the foundation for the class. The problem with teaching nutrition is that it's a conflict of interest with the cafeteria catering companies and Big Ag's control of school lunch nutrition guidelines which make pizza a vegetable. Guess what...money wins.
There is so much wrong with this post.
1. Pizza is not considered "a vegetable" by the school lunch guidelines. More accurately, given the right ingredients it can meet a single usda serving of vegetable for the guidelines. This is the same for casseroles, sandwiches, tacos and other mixed - ingredient foods.
2. That multiple food groups are involved in no way negates the nutritive content of the parts. Originally that was not the case, schools, not "big ag" lobbied for the pizza exemption because in the original draft pizza was explicitly banned as unhealthy in all situations.
3. "Big Ag", by which I can only assume you mean the entire US agricultural and food industries, had precisely no input into the nutrition guidelines. Neither did the schools. The process was purely political.
4. Every school is now subjected to an exhaustive government oversight of their food, and has been since 2010.6 -
Don't I remember that it was actually ketchup that was a vegetable?6
-
The problem with nutrition is that you don't actually look at anything useful. Do you know what I did in my 1 semester of nutrition? We read the book and spent the entire class in silence writing out both the question AND the answer in complete sentences. Like, How many servings of grains do you need in one day? You need X amount of servings of grains in one day. The teacher literally sat at his desk and did nothing except collect the papers at the end of the class; and it would always taken the full hour and thirty minutes to complete the questions at the end of the chapter.
There was very little taught about how much exercise it ACTUALLY TAKES to burn calories. And how many calories tend to be in bad foods. This was back before McDonald's started publishing on their menus that a medium fry is like 400 calories. And our schools often served nachos, french fries, hamburgers, etc for lunch. We had to pick a "vegetable" or a "fruit" side which often consisted of mashed potatoes, broccoli and cheese, or a jello fruit cup. So in addition to teaching me NOTHING about practical nutrition (like how large a serving size is!), the schools contributed to the problem by serving crappy lunches and cutting recess short. I had no clue, until at 27 years old, and after struggling with being overweight/obese since middle school, I bought a food scale, how small serving sizes really are.
I was never shown a hamburger with a sign that said "This is 600-1500 calories" (depending on the kind of burger, what came on it, etc). And then show me something healthy like half of a turkey and cheese sandwich and some baby carrots that had a sign that said it was 300-500 calories. That kind of stuff may have made a HUGE difference when I was growing up.5 -
I'm 44, and in my day we were theoretically taught about nutrition in health class every year, and it was all very vague and did nothing. From what my son (24) tells me it was pretty much the same when he was in school. I got the 4 food groups, he got the Food Pyramid. Neither is helpful at all, IMO.
It would be cool if kids learned about the science of nutrition, macronutrients and micronutrients, calories, how food fuels the body, etc. Not endorsing any specific type of diet. Just present the facts as they are known. Of course, that's a pipe dream. You only have to look at the utter crap they serve in school cafeterias to know that.
I also completely disagree with PackerJohn about physical education. My PE teachers all through the second part of grade school and junior high were hardcore, and you were going to run the mile unless you were dying (I did it for a whole semester while I had walking pneumonia, because they said that pain in my back would be relieved by running--and I'd been in track for a while by then so was conditioned to listen to Coach). We also had to do the stupid president challenge thing and I still can't do the flexed arm hang. It didn't make us all athletes; in fact I had to quit track because I basically ran myself into a hospital bed and six months of convalescence, and that was the end of my involvement with school athletics. I'd like to see them teach some purposeful exercise and train kids to be strong and explain to them why and encourage them, instead of just calling you a baby whale if you couldn't do sixty situps in a minute or run an 8-minute mile (not that I'm bitter).3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »The problem with PE in the schools is we have gotten too politically correct to make the kids actually put in some effort. Growing up, we ran laps and if we walked we had to run extra. Now, you go by a school and the kids are strolling around the track, if not stopping to talk or look at their phones.
If a teacher actually makes them put in some effort, kids complain to the parents who are in the principal's office demand the "mean" PE teacher be fired.
Yes it does happen.
I'm not going to argue that this kind of lowest common denominator downgrading of physical effort is a good thing, but equally, I think old school PE "teaching" was also pretty crappy as well. When it's running season, did the PE teacher establish the fitness level of the students and give them a programme aimed at developing them from a base level & gradually improving, or did he just say "cross country run! 5 miles! now! go!". If it's football season, did he start by introducing skills or did you just end up on a field playing and being shouted at (that one might be different for American football, which is far more technically complex than real football / soccer). The first time I played rugby, I had no idea at all of the rules, and no-one told me until I was on the bottom of a ruck holding onto the ball for dear life getting the crap kicked out of me - how does that instill a love of sport in a child?
Everyone who develops fitness or sport knows that you have to start from a base and build up, but that never happened to me at school, or to anyone I knew. 35 years later it didn't happen to my daughter either.
If it actually did happen, then maybe it would provide a chance for the unfit kids to participate (even if at a lesser level) as well as not holding back the sportier kids, and just maybe the less-fit kids would continue sports and fitness instead of dropping it at the earliest opportunity.3 -
Packerjohn wrote: »The problem with PE in the schools is we have gotten too politically correct to make the kids actually put in some effort. Growing up, we ran laps and if we walked we had to run extra. Now, you go by a school and the kids are strolling around the track, if not stopping to talk or look at their phones.
If a teacher actually makes them put in some effort, kids complain to the parents who are in the principal's office demand the "mean" PE teacher be fired.
Yes it does happen.
I'm not going to argue that this kind of lowest common denominator downgrading of physical effort is a good thing, but equally, I think old school PE "teaching" was also pretty crappy as well. When it's running season, did the PE teacher establish the fitness level of the students and give them a programme aimed at developing them from a base level & gradually improving, or did he just say "cross country run! 5 miles! now! go!". If it's football season, did he start by introducing skills or did you just end up on a field playing and being shouted at (that one might be different for American football, which is far more technically complex than real football / soccer). The first time I played rugby, I had no idea at all of the rules, and no-one told me until I was on the bottom of a ruck holding onto the ball for dear life getting the crap kicked out of me - how does that instill a love of sport in a child?
Everyone who develops fitness or sport knows that you have to start from a base and build up, but that never happened to me at school, or to anyone I knew. 35 years later it didn't happen to my daughter either.
If it actually did happen, then maybe it would provide a chance for the unfit kids to participate (even if at a lesser level) as well as not holding back the sportier kids, and just maybe the less-fit kids would continue sports and fitness instead of dropping it at the earliest opportunity.
I had asthma as a child but it went undiagnosed until well into adulthood because I have coughing spasms instead of wheezing.
I still have nightmares about being forced to run around a track over and over, and losing my recess time because I couldn't manage to run a mile nonstop at the age of 10 without pausing to cough. I remember the PE teacher telling me to stop whining and learn to push through the coughing. I honestly figured I was clearly not meant to be athletic at all.
In high school my parents insisted I join a sport. I procrastinated, mostly out of fear of tryouts, until spring when I only had one option: track and field. That was ok, I figured, because I liked jumping. The coughing while running thing resurfaced, big-time. No one picked up on the coughing being asthma at all during high school. In fact, I made it through college (and mandatory PE) and several years of grad school before diagnosis.
Something so simple as a single puff a day of a medicine to control my asthma has completely changed my outlook on exercise!
0 -
I'm 44, and in my day we were theoretically taught about nutrition in health class every year, and it was all very vague and did nothing. From what my son (24) tells me it was pretty much the same when he was in school. I got the 4 food groups, he got the Food Pyramid. Neither is helpful at all, IMO.
It would be cool if kids learned about the science of nutrition, macronutrients and micronutrients, calories, how food fuels the body, etc. Not endorsing any specific type of diet. Just present the facts as they are known. Of course, that's a pipe dream. You only have to look at the utter crap they serve in school cafeterias to know that.
I also completely disagree with PackerJohn about physical education. My PE teachers all through the second part of grade school and junior high were hardcore, and you were going to run the mile unless you were dying (I did it for a whole semester while I had walking pneumonia, because they said that pain in my back would be relieved by running--and I'd been in track for a while by then so was conditioned to listen to Coach). We also had to do the stupid president challenge thing and I still can't do the flexed arm hang. It didn't make us all athletes; in fact I had to quit track because I basically ran myself into a hospital bed and six months of convalescence, and that was the end of my involvement with school athletics. I'd like to see them teach some purposeful exercise and train kids to be strong and explain to them why and encourage them, instead of just calling you a baby whale if you couldn't do sixty situps in a minute or run an 8-minute mile (not that I'm bitter).
Sorry for your experience, but did you have a doctor's note saying you were sick? The PE teacher can't always tell if a kid is sick or just whining/dogging it.0 -
Packerjohn wrote: »The problem with PE in the schools is we have gotten too politically correct to make the kids actually put in some effort. Growing up, we ran laps and if we walked we had to run extra. Now, you go by a school and the kids are strolling around the track, if not stopping to talk or look at their phones.
If a teacher actually makes them put in some effort, kids complain to the parents who are in the principal's office demand the "mean" PE teacher be fired.
Yes it does happen.
I'm not going to argue that this kind of lowest common denominator downgrading of physical effort is a good thing, but equally, I think old school PE "teaching" was also pretty crappy as well. When it's running season, did the PE teacher establish the fitness level of the students and give them a programme aimed at developing them from a base level & gradually improving, or did he just say "cross country run! 5 miles! now! go!". If it's football season, did he start by introducing skills or did you just end up on a field playing and being shouted at (that one might be different for American football, which is far more technically complex than real football / soccer). The first time I played rugby, I had no idea at all of the rules, and no-one told me until I was on the bottom of a ruck holding onto the ball for dear life getting the crap kicked out of me - how does that instill a love of sport in a child?
Everyone who develops fitness or sport knows that you have to start from a base and build up, but that never happened to me at school, or to anyone I knew. 35 years later it didn't happen to my daughter either.
If it actually did happen, then maybe it would provide a chance for the unfit kids to participate (even if at a lesser level) as well as not holding back the sportier kids, and just maybe the less-fit kids would continue sports and fitness instead of dropping it at the earliest opportunity.
Very good points about establishing a baseline and training from there. I would agree that is how I would do it. I noted you're from England. One of the "challenges" in US schools now is the parents don't want their kids singled out. There would be people at the principal's office complaining if the PE teacher tested at the start of the year and put the less fit kids in a "special" group for remedial work.0 -
AmandaOmega wrote: »The problem with nutrition is that you don't actually look at anything useful. Do you know what I did in my 1 semester of nutrition? We read the book and spent the entire class in silence writing out both the question AND the answer in complete sentences. Like, How many servings of grains do you need in one day? You need X amount of servings of grains in one day. The teacher literally sat at his desk and did nothing except collect the papers at the end of the class; and it would always taken the full hour and thirty minutes to complete the questions at the end of the chapter.
There was very little taught about how much exercise it ACTUALLY TAKES to burn calories. And how many calories tend to be in bad foods. This was back before McDonald's started publishing on their menus that a medium fry is like 400 calories. And our schools often served nachos, french fries, hamburgers, etc for lunch. We had to pick a "vegetable" or a "fruit" side which often consisted of mashed potatoes, broccoli and cheese, or a jello fruit cup. So in addition to teaching me NOTHING about practical nutrition (like how large a serving size is!), the schools contributed to the problem by serving crappy lunches and cutting recess short. I had no clue, until at 27 years old, and after struggling with being overweight/obese since middle school, I bought a food scale, how small serving sizes really are.
I was never shown a hamburger with a sign that said "This is 600-1500 calories" (depending on the kind of burger, what came on it, etc). And then show me something healthy like half of a turkey and cheese sandwich and some baby carrots that had a sign that said it was 300-500 calories. That kind of stuff may have made a HUGE difference when I was growing up.
Yes!! We learned about the how many servings of the basic food groups we should be eating every day. But as far as I remember nothing about how many calories foods contain. Given that your weight is all about CICO, calories in food should be highlighted.
However kids really have no control as to the foods they are served. They aren't doing the grocery shopping and cooking. They aren't choosing the restaurants and takeout. I mean kids request but the parent or caregiver decides. Since we are in a phase of not saying no to kids, they eat foods that are high calorie without a lot of satisfying nutrition. So they get hungry again and eat more.
I have known it was CICO since the first time I decided I need to drop weight. What I didn't know was just how many calories foods have. It was a surprise finding out lunch at Mcdonalds could be your entire days allowance.
We had real recess and PE when I was in school. After recess stopped because of grade level, PE started every day. Doing something that made us run around for the entire class.period. That doesn't happen now in most school districts. It's once a week. In high school kids are only required to take two semesters of PE.
I want a national campaign about CICO. Programs in school, on TV and Internet. If it's simply CICO there isn't any need to get into specific foods.0 -
I want a national campaign about CICO. Programs in school, on TV and Internet. If it's simply CICO there isn't any need to get into specific foods. [/quote]
That is the ultimate truth that so many don't want to hear because it either requires some restraint-in-eating or more exercise, but it needs to go just a smidge deeper than that, IMO! It wasn't until I took Chemistry, that I learned that a calories is a calorie - doesn't matter if it came from a cookie or a leaf of kale. Biology taught that 3500 calories equal a pound. Then later, as an adult, I learned about Glycemic responses and began to realize that most of what kids LIKE to eat today, gets processed as "sugar" by the digestive system. They get all sugar-buzzed on a PB&J on white bread, or fries/ketchup, then they can't sit still in class for a few hours and by midafternoon, suffer a blood-sugar crash and WANT MORE SUGAR. As the starving kid scarfs down potato chips, the parent proudly says their child doesn't eat "sugar". (oh really??) So if you can teach kids (and adults) to avoid the high-glycemic foods, they can avoid those roller-coaster blood-sugar rides.
0 -
In the US, a lot of the school requirements are different from state to state. Where I lived, growing up, we learned about nutrition. It was the food pyramid, because that's the age I am. I actually remember in Junior High Health class being taught how large a portion size was. Some of it stuck (a slice of bread, half a roll, etc.) - some of it didn't (how much of a vegetable?). That doesn't mean the teacher never taught it. It means I didn't use it, so I didn't retain it.
Gym class was three days a week and it was a full hour in elementary school, 30-40 minutes in middle/high school. It was also taught by people who went to school - earned master's degrees - in Physical Fitness Education. That's a requirement in my home state. We had one teacher for our regular class and another for gym, even in elementary school.
At that point, it was before they changed things to not single out kids and I was in the "Adjusted Gym Class" in high school. That was the gym class for the non-athletic kids. They already had us separated from the "Average Class" and the "Advanced Class". I'd have loved for them to actually teach us how to play games. It would have made it a lot more fun to actually know how to hit a ball in softball or throw/catch a football. We also had to do the Presidential Fitness Challenge. I could get above 80% in everything except... the agility part of the challenge. (8 minute mile easily, flexed arm hang for longer than anyone in the class, I think it was 17 inches on the v-sit and reach...) Yeah... I'm still not agile. How do you improve that?
I say this to point out that a lot of the foolish questions you get here... it's not the fault of the schools or the parents. It's generally the media that promotes the latest fad or pseudoscience.0 -
I say this to point out that a lot of the foolish questions you get here... it's not the fault of the schools or the parents. It's generally the media that promotes the latest fad or pseudoscience.
At a certain point, though, you either choose to educate yourself or you choose to be ignorant. I am having a hard time not thinking that some of the ignorance that we see -- and I am also referring to topics well beyond nutrition, as I referenced before and Packerjohn elaborated on -- is willful, chosen. I don't understand this; it frustrates me. So much of what people repeat here not only is wrong, but just makes no sense if you think about it at all. I don't understand why people believe such things -- I think they must want to on some level.3
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.3K Introduce Yourself
- 43.4K Getting Started
- 259.6K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 387 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.2K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.2K MyFitnessPal Information
- 22 News and Announcements
- 911 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions