For us parents out there

Thanks for posting this! It's eye opening to see nutrition and fitness through the eyes of children. I always shake my head at the mothers (and some fathers) on here who post about having to cook seperate meals for the rest of their family while they eat "diet/healthy" food. I can never understand why the whole family doesn't eat healthy. Children shouldn't be learning that fruits/veggies/healthy food are punishment for being overweight. We are just setting them up for failure that way.

I teach students in grades 9-12 in a high poverty district and, having recently enacted the new school lunch standards, often hear similar comments from our students. I think it is a cultural mindset, stemming from the fact that the less nutritious higher-starch foods do cost less than fresh whole foods. Most of my students had never seen whole grain bread up close, much less eaten it, until now.

Side note: The new luch standards have helped us teachers in one sense... it is even easier now to identify the students who are truly living with hunger. They are the ones reaping the most benefits from this because they are cleaning up the leftover food that others are turning their noses up at because "only sick and fat people eat that ****"

I run a children's centre in London and we are on a real healthy living drive because of the high obesity in our area. There are many families in this area of high deprivation who have no idea about how to live healthy for less. What I do is put on courses such as cook and eat sessions for families so that they experience cooking with their children. Parents always come to us with the same story, "Johnny wont eat peas or avocado". but generally after one session they are sitting there with the other children chomping away at their greens.

In the area I work we in a battle with the amount of fast food shops and lack of fruit and veg stores in the area. What is interesting is that in the better off areas there are plenty of organic shops or fruit and veg stores. You mostly see health conscious people in them but in the fast food joints, where they sell cheap meal deals, you see people are are the opposite.

We as educators have to design programmes to support families with healthy living and help them to change their mindset about foods that are good for you as well as exercise.

Move more and eat well is my motto.

@ DawnieB

Yes, there is a lot of trouble with excessive take-out food with my students too, and they are far more expensive so go figure. But the foods they buy with their food stamps tend to be instant mashed potatoes, cheap pastas, white bread, cheap canned veggies, store-brand Hamburger Helper type meals, boxed mac&cheese. These are all foods that fill up a plate but bring little nutrition to the meal when compared to the calories. Lots of processing. Not much in the way of fresh meats or even dried beans, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables. Their food palatte is so limited that when I bring in a dish of Greek yogurt, they had no clue what it was. (I let a couple of kids try it and ended up not getting any lunch myself they liked it!)

Let's not forget how our American culture has changed since the 1950's. Now we have most households where IF there are 2 parents, both are working full time and 1 parent households are extremly frantic juggling many many balls. We live in a society that is much more productive, more competitive and more time sensitive. Parents are working 10-12 hours a day. Little Johnny has activities after school every day now parents are more & more trying to turn their kids into adults. Music lessons, sports, having to go to every after school event....so something had to give. Instead of the Dad working and Mom at home cooking dinner from scratch, their picking Lille Johnny up from either the day care or the soccer game at 5:45 and scrambling to fimd what to eat.

BAM..if it's not the Wendys drive-thru Mom's throwing some processed crap in the microwave at home or maybe a Pizza Hut Pizza on a family night out. That's only part of the problem. Many parent now don't discipline their kid. If Little Johnny turns his nose up at the grilled salmon & veggies, mommy or daddy wo want to be their kids friend instead of their parent makes a special batch of mac & cheese. Then every damn store loads the checkout areas with comfort food like coke & candy.

Let's face it folks, society is different. The baby boomers & kids after them were taught instant gratification not sacrifice & discipline. Times have changed. We might be coming full circle and society is seeing many of our *kitten* have just got too damn fat and we're going to do something about it.