Corn Dog casserole via Thisiswhyyourefat.com
I don’t have kids yet, so my opinion on America’s growing fat kid problem is primarily based on my own childhood that by no means was void of deliciously unhealthy treats. At the same time, you don’t have to be a parent in order to be worried about the bulging waistlines of our country’s kids.
Our kids are fat, plain and simple.
But it’s not just the fat, it’s the diabetes, the lowered life expectancy, high obesity and all of the horrible health issues that go along with it that concern me even more.
Why are they so fat?
They’re eating crap – at home, at school and out with their parents in popular restaurants. Turns out that restaurants, unsurprisingly, are the worst of the three. Just check out the list of “20 worst kids’ foods in America” recently published at MSNBC.com.
“Restaurants are no more kind to our children’s health and well-being than they are to our own: The typical burger, soda, and fries that you and I ate as kids contains an average of 214 more calories today than that same meal did in the 1970s — enough to add at least 3 pounds of weight a year to your child’s body, even if he or she ate that fast-food meal just once a week.”
“As a result, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled since 1980 — today, 16 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight or obese. An additional 15 percent of kids are “at risk of becoming overweight or obese.”
If you are what you eat, I don’t want to be a grilled cheese sandwich with a saturated fat count equal to an entire package of cooked bacon.
But even without kids, I’ve been working to emulate the kind of cooking eating habits I was taught in my house growing up. It’s simple – you eat a meal that was prepared with real ingredients, only a small fraction of it being pre-packaged, and you eat together, sitting down at a table.
Sounds crazy, right?
The downsides are few – you have to prepare the meal, which involves a trip to the grocery store, food preparation and cooking. And, you have to clean it all up yourself.
The major upside to making a meal at home - you know what’s in it. You know how much butter, oil and salt you use and you can control the portion sizes your preparing.
When I was growing up we ate 90% of the time at home with the other 10% coming from the occasional pizza, Wings City visit or fast food stop. But, eating out wasn’t an everyday. Instead it was somehting special, even if it was just a nasty box of Chicken Nuggets (with Sweet & Sour, please).
I’m not going to say that stopping our growing fat kid problem is easy. But, we can get ourselves off to a great start by getting back to the basics. Cook your own food, keep a Fruit Loop-free kitchen and get moving. Mmk? Thanks.
