The seeds for many ailments in adults of mature years were planted in children’s diet, nutrition and parental modeling.  Heart and kidney problems are just behind obesity related diabetes.  Eat more, watch TV obsessively and exercise less is the pattern in this century.  In a time when children are excused from work or learning how to work they are kept from complaining “I’m bored, there’s nothing to do” by being fed, pampered and entertained by “block-buster films for each season and holiday.  This is followed by seeing these entertainments all over again as TV reruns.  Children know how to use the TV, manipulate VCRs and hand-held gadgets that play downloaded music and pictures on demand at any time and any place.  All this is accompanied by “SNACKS”.

Folk beliefs were around that heavy children with rolls of fat on their bodies are a sign of health and wealth. The fat in the heads of the parents matches this phenomenon because they aid and abet the problem. Most people do not know how to parent wisely and spoil their children by aiding a life-time of sloth and self-gratification.  Seemingly undernourished children may be healthier because they can be more active.  They are not impeded by rolls of fat and habits that take them indoors to play computer games that are clones of TV.  It starts early in life and, in many, continues far beyond the arrival of diseases that are unknown in less affluent times or in less over-consuming societies.

There is no scientific proof from non-existent studies that show overweight people are fat because we no longer have a society where hunters and gatherers had to scramble to get what they ate. Competition to get people to buy forces producers of foods to load them down with fats and sugars and thus train people to eat even more. They use the remote control to put on another round of mind-deadening sit-coms or a rerun of shows whose heroes are thin, beautiful and handsome. This is something to think about.

I am reminded of a colleague who was thin and abstemious in eating.  He had a heart condition and looked for ways to protect himself and his family from his early demise.  He studied ideas about improving his health and habits.  One of these was called “Positive Addiction”. The key point was to think through your day about the addictions we all have – ways of thinking and behavior that are not good for us.  We are addicted to eating the wrong foods and not getting enough exercise.  What he did was to begin exercise on a regular basis.  He began to jog and added miles and miles as time went on. He ate carefully and never gained an ounce and started each day by running some miles.  He got to the point where in middle age he decided to run marathons and one killed him.

I thought that if I gave a child a TV of his own it would make that child happier.  Unfortunately, I did not teach him to work, work consistently and see the need to be proficient and think healthy about eating and bodily welfare.  I blame myself for his being obese and diabetic. There are fat kids but there are also fat-headed parents.