When I was younger, I was a pretty fat kid. If my parents had let me, I'm pretty sure I would've eaten McDonald's every day of the week. I was a sucker for those fries. (I still am too.) I had a weakness for any kind of pop too. Microwave popcorn was my go-to snack, and I'm talking about the whole entire bag. Plus, I thought fruit snacks counted as a fruit. (I mean, seriously, the more I think about all of this, the more I just want to go and munch on carrot sticks for the rest of my life.) In the end, I was an obese child just like a 1/3 of America's youth.
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| Sure kid, have another burger. Have fun fitting in your car seat later. |
Now, unless you're home-schooled, live under a rock, or just are not in touch with society, you've probably heard of/experienced the school lunch changes. No more pizza every day of the week, cottage cheese, or salty, greasy fries. Now we have broccoli, chicken everything, and mashed sweet potatos.
Most high-school students aren't impressed with it, especially since the calorie count has been cut a lot. Basically, they cut out some of the pizza's, fries, chicken nuggets, and soup from the school lunch calendar. (Notice I said some.) Personally, I don't mind it since I usually bring my own lunch. (Actually, the reason I started brown-bagging it was because that I used to think the school lunches were too greasy, but this was before the school-lunch change.) Plus the way I saw it, if I forgot to make a lunch, I could just buy one that was just as good and healthy as my own.
"Now why did the schools change the lunches?" You may ask, "I was perfectly happy with my pizza everyday and I'm not morbidly obese." Well, yeah, you were probably fine, but there are tons of obese kids out there that ate pizza for lunch too. The difference is they ate pizza all day instead of just for one meal. I'm also guessing most of the veggies they saw were in pictures. Heck, they probably thought chicken always came in the McNugget form.
In my opinion, society is leaving all that nutrition knowledge up to schools to teach us. I mean, you learn stuff in schools, so why don't learn how to eat healthy in schools? It can't possibly be the parents' fault that a third of our nation's kids are overweight and/or obese. (Are you kidding me, society?)
No, in many cases (but not all of them), I believe it is the parent's fault that their child is obese. It's even been proven by these guys! Parents should take responsibility for their children and teach them about healthy living.
Schools can teach kids about healthy eating all they want, but in the end the parents need to apply it to the child's life. How can we expect kids to eat healthy if all they have at home are Dorito's and microwave pizza? It just bamboozles me.
Granted, teenagers are an exception to this. Not only are they more aware of what they're eating, but they're almost adults too. Plus, it doesn't help that some have really busy schedules and tons of homework. Trust me, it would be extremely hard to pull an all-nighter with just apple juice and graham crackers.
Instead of having schools solely teach kids about healthy eating, they should try to educate parents too. Sending kids home with a healthy, easy recipe could help. Instead of pizza coupons for those student awards, they could get a coupon for Subway. (Who doesn't love free Subway?) If worse comes to worse, the school could have a sit-down with parents about the importance of a healthy diet. It sounds kind of unnecessary and cruel, I know, but it might be one of the only ways to educate parents about healthy eating.
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