Lunch and schools
Tom Colicchio comments on HR5504 – Improving nutrition for America’s Children using a personal example to illustrate his point that obesity can be symptom of poverty. Currently obesity is a problem for more of us than we care to admit, and most worrisome for kids.
More recently, my wife [filmmaker Lori Silverbush] started mentoring a young girl from Brooklyn and she would come to the house and she would eat and then she’d say “Oh, I’m full. Can I bring this home?” And we realized what she was doing; she was bringing it home for her siblings.
When food stamps run out halfway through the month, these kids are hungry. And they’re fed sweetened juice water, just to put something in their stomach; it’s not nice.
…We had a Major General who testified that forty percent of new recruits going into the service fail out because they’re obese. It’s not from overfeeding. This is what people don’t understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It’s not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It’s because kids – and this is the problem with school lunch right now – are getting sugar, fat, empty calories – lots of calories – but no nutrition.
…And they’re hungry, they’re eating more cheap food.
Penny wise pound foolish.
Cuts in human programs contribute to the growing % of GDP for medical delivery.
But the insurance cabal is good to go!!
ilsm won’t change.
I do not take issue with the idea that poor people often make ends meet by consuming food that is high in fat and calories for the price, but people make poor food choices for a host of other reasons. Modern Americans do not exercise anywhere near enough, are too lazy,busy or ignorant to prepare foods within their budgets which would be better for them, drink a lot of empty calories in soda and/or alcohol and have had the government convince them not to smoke so when they get the first tinge of hunger they eat. There are plenty of financially well off folks who are morbidly obese. Is poverty a factor? Sure, but it is not one of the more significant factors, at least IMHO.
Terry: Your humble opinion isn’t worth much unless you can back it up with facts. A recent study has shown, counterintuitively, that youngsters get fat first, then cut back on exercise (possibly, mr self-righteousnasty man, becaue they just plain don’t feel well because they are malnourished).
Self righteousness never solved a problem, and that sort of nastiness is the sort of thing that allows the self-righteous to avoid dealing with the problem. This is called blaming the victim.
I am not concerned for adults……………
The children suffer. And pay for the war machine and other diversions of the fruits of land, and knoweldge.
Well there you go playing the victim card. There may indeed be some obese people who are victims, but most are not. My evidence is the morbidly obese people I know, most of whom are not poor, were not poor as children and were chubby things even then. You can crticise that for being self rightous, but it is not because I do not recognize the problem of hunger in this land of plenty. As to kids and exercise, you could have pointed out how broke municipalties have cut both physical education in schools and closed parks and pools and I would accept it in a nano second. The idea that kids get fat and do not feel like exercising is an excuse and a lame one at that.
Consider yet how far we have come in WWII the military found that a large number of entering military were undernourished. We invented fast food so that we went from undernourished to mal nourished. (The undernourishment was why the school lunch program was originally started).
But in addition consider that food may be a way to obtain a brief release from the despairation of everyday life. And also many may figure that the folks who worry about longevity may be puritians at heart, while they have the New Orleans attitude of live for today tommorrow will take care of itself. (Come to think of it many religions also make the same point)
Yeah Tom you see alot of obese Ethiopians and Somalis. It’s weird. Watching footage of the Haitian earthquake I was shocked at all the obese Haitians running around. But, I must hand it to Tom. He’s done a wonderful job at his Craft restaurants making excellent nutritional food inexpensive! It may be due to Tom’s extensive knowledge of poverty. A recent dinner for four at Craft WITHOUT tip and wine ran a little over $400.
Well there you go, Terry. I’m sure you knew a lot of poor obese people when you were growing up, since you yourself were poor and attended schools primarily attended by poor people. Wait, you were middle class and attended schools primarily attended by middle class people and thus only knew middle class obese people and the causes of their problems? Gosh darn it, you are just *so* much an expert on the problems of obesity amongst the impoverished that I must tip my hat in awe at your grasp of facts utterly unimpaired by, like, actual knowledge!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Ah well folks…the anger is noteworthy in Tom’s objection. I was careful in my wording if he chooses to re-read the post.
I remember all the fuss about the Japaneses educational system being so much better than US education, but the Japanese require rigorous exercise 3 times a day in elementary school…and not recess, nor was academic underachievement punished by having to stay in from recess….little kids need to run and play hard…and teachers played with the kids.
I never saw any acknowledgement of that part of the Japanese curriculum in the many years Americans in general write about curriculum even at the height of admiration.
I think that applying a point of view that might be appropriate to one individual to millions of individuals is not thinking clearly, and thinking about what is heppening in America regarding obesity across varied economic groups as some sort of aggregate moral failure without explaining how such a sweeping moral failure could happen in a generation or so is simply a conversation stopper. Tom could try to explain to us how such a huge moral change could be so viral without externals being a part of the situation….????
Terry
are you recommending smoking?
Terry
i wonder how you got this way.
i suspect i’d agree with you about poor choices. But there they are. Now what do we do about it?
Ah, stop being nannies. Just let nature take its course? Heck. We could do that about all our problems. No reason a human being should care about his neighbor.
But as for money for PE. When I went to school we had mandatory PE. So we all got to dress in our gym shorts and stand in line while the PE teacher administered physical fitness tests and duly recorded the results, which were no doubt summarized and analyzed. And then we all went in and took group showers. A little traumatic for some of the younger kids, but, hey, that was the whole point.
time was, kids “exercised” because they were having what is called “fun.”