Graehm Gray-President Obama To Target Childhood Obesity
Let’s all say, “finally!” Yes, it has happened. The White House, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are targeting the epidemic of childhood obesity. You read it here, in The Nerdel News, a statement by President Barack Obama forming a taskforce headed by Michelle, to “solve the problem of obesity among our Nation’s children within a generation.” As you all know, The Nerdel News and I have been way ahead of this issue as have many other nutrition and fitness experts. Increase in portion sizes, lack of substantial exercise, more availability of high fat, high carbohydrate and calorie dense foods to our younger folks, more devotion to technology and less to play time are just some of the problems. When schools say that exercise time is walking to the cafeteria, I have a problem with that. We all know the statistics-30 percent of our kids are either overweight or obese. These kids will grow up to be overweight, unhealthy adults if we don’t do something about it. So what can we do? A. Increase exercise time for our kids-make it mandatory in schools. B. Review the school lunch and breakfast programs for portion size and content- make them healthy! C. make an incentive program for parents to get their kids (and themselves) in shape-either tax credits or food credits. Why not! We gave money to banks and insurance companies for what? For not loaning money!! Why not give it to parents to help keep their kids healthy-positive reinforcement-sounds good to me. D. Education-let’s spend money on educating kids and parents on healthy lifestyles, foods, exercises and habits-and tie it into the Food Stamp Programs. Let’s provide healthy choices on the food stamp programs. E. Let’s encourage companies to provide wellness programs for their workers. How? Well how about tax incentives? What we need ladies and gentlemen is our government to help the people get and stay in shape (remember “We the people….”); G. Bring back the Home Economics courses and retool them for current nutrition and fitness education. My friends, we need to make eating healthy and exercising a common goal and we need our kids to find heroes that embrace all of those habits. When our children start saying to us that they want to be like, Nerdel for example, and eat vegetables and exercise, we will have succeeded. When our kids tell us that they want to play and exercise and eat fruits instead of candy, we will have succeeded. When our kids choose a healthy meal at a restaurant (whether its fast food or otherwise) and are careful with the portion sizes, we will have succeeded. When our kids sit at the dinner or breakfast table and tell us about healthy foods, we will have succeeded. You see, it’s a vertical transmission of education-we send it down to them and they can send it right back up to us!
Mr. President and First Lady Michelle, Nerdel and The Nerdel News stand with you and are here to help. Together we can make a difference. Together we can make our schools not only a place for academic education, but for healthy education and experience. Together, we can educate and help parents understand what will keep their children fit and healthy. Together, we can reach out to Corporate America and forge an alliance and partnership for a healthy country. It’s all up to us. If you have any good suggestions on solving the childhood obesity problem, send them to me here talk@nerdel.com.
My friends, stay fit and healthy the New Nerdel Way!
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