Peter Cottontail...waddling down the bunny trail

If fairy tales kept abreast of modern trends, poor Peter Cottontail would be too fat to do much hopping…he’d be sprawled on the sofa watching TV and snacking on junk food. I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here but, unless you’ve been on Gilligan’s island for the last twenty years, you’re as aware as I that children’s weights are increasing at an alarming rate, as are the numbers of children who are packing on excess body fat.

With spring in the air my mind goes back to when I was little and how excited my friends and I were about our new Easter outfits. As I think back I recall that in those days (early fifties) there was only one little girl in our school who could be described as obese. She wasn’t the subject of ridicule, just accepted for who she was and, since all her family was overweight, her condition was simply chalked up to family trait. I have a picture of five of us little girls in our Easter best and there she is, just as proud and happy as the rest of us.

How times have changed. Today a school of similar size would probably have twenty obese little girls (there were no boys in our school!) and many more who could be described as overweight. While exercise is not my area of expertise, one doesn’t need to be an exercise physiologist to understand that reduced activity has a major part to play in the fattening of North American children. I’m sure you’ve read about or discussed the nature of the problem before, but to recap, here’s a synopsis of the situation:

The School Bus: Unless a child lives next door to the school, most are either driven by their parents or take the bus. I won’t pretend there’s an easy solution here, but we need to acknowledge that the simple act of walking has been reduced to a foreign concept for many kids and “in my day” walking was the main activity that kept us in shape.

Television: What to say? The number of hours that the average child is plunked in front of the TV is staggering. I’ve heard of a number of arrangements that attempt to address the problem…one Mom lets her child watch television as long as she’s walking on the treadmill while viewing. Another has a similar arrangement for an exercise bike. Some parents simply limit TV time but that doesn’t insure that they’re otherwise being active. Even reading is a sedentary pastime. GET OUTSIDE AND PLAY!

Computers: There’s no getting around it, technology has revolutionized our lives and computers and computer games have changed the way in which kids amuse themselves. Hide-and-seek just can’t compete with the adrenalin rush of star-wars type games. Limiting time spent on these games is about the only reasonable approach.

Diet. OK…on to an area where I’m on more comfortable ground. What is the major dietary difference between today and when I was a child, and even when my sons were children? Pop! In the fifties pop was something you had at a birthday party and very special occasions. It wasn’t part of the weekly grocery list and it certainly wasn’t consumed as part of a meal. Even when my children were little, pop was special although I will admit to letting the boys have pop with their pizzas on Friday nights.

But are the calories that come with a can of pop sufficient to account for the upswing in kids’ weight? No. But, of course, some children have more than one glass of pop a day. Still the question has more to do with what the pop is replacing and in a word, the replaced food is milk. But, you might argue, a glass of milk has roughly the same amount of calories as a glass of pop. True enough, but in nutrition nothing is ever quite as simple as it might seem at first blush. Turns out that calcium, of which milk is a major supplier, plays an important role in breaking down fat and leading to less fat deposits. Studies have confirmed that kids who drink milk instead of pop are way less likely to have a weight problem. As milk consumption has gone down and pop-drinking has gone up, so has the average weight of children.

Snacks: Sure, we’d all like to see kids snacking on carrot sticks instead of chips, but unless the parent is in control of the larder, it ain’t gonna happen. Parents still buy the groceries and it takes tough love to make sure that greasy snack foods are available only rarely. Seeing that healthful snacks are at hand is the parent’s job and from the looks of things, some are falling down on the job. Moms and Dads who wouldn’t dream of letting their offspring go unbelted in the family sedan, would never let them play with matches, or be within a mile of cigarette smoke somehow fail to see the long-term consequences of a poor diet. I certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers, heck, maybe even none of the answers, but this I do know: something must be done and that something begins with small improvements, one at a time. Family walks, sports participation, pantry make-overs. If shortening or hydrogenated vegetable oil is on the ingredient list, throw it out; fresh fruit available for quick snacking; cakes, pies and pastries for special occasions only.

It’s do-able, but it takes effort. Come on people, let’s put this weight problem behind us…or at least further behind than it currently is!