While working today on the bookmobile, a family came on and the mother registered three of her five children for library cards. Two of them already had cards so they didn't need to be signed up for them. After all was said and done, the family checked out - get this - 35 DVDs! So I'm sitting there figuring that if they watched them all in 7 days, that would mean five movies per day, at an average of two hours length per movie, meaning those kids would be sitting in front of the boob tube for 10 hours a day. Not all of the films they checked out were kids movies, either. In fact, the lion's share of them were violent adult "kill them all" movies, or violent scary horror movies. For such young children of tender years to be exposed to that sort of thing is appalling, and the mother kept screaming at the kids, "No books! No books!" even though they really wanted to take some out. One of the daughters did check out a stack of them but I was forced to check them back in again when the mother protested that she didn't want her daughter taking out any books, just movies. She checked out some "urban fiction" novels for herself and her teenaged daughter, but the younger children were only allowed movies. Worst of all, the entire family were obese, obviously lacking in exercise. Doubtless these kids are spending far too much time in a sedentary lifestyle in front of the electronic babysitter.
Today, one in three children is considered either overweight or obese. One in three! And 70% of Americans are overweight. I watched a news clip online last night that was an interview with a guy who wrote a book on mindful eating, and he mentioned that the average size of a dinner plate has increased in 50 years from 9" to 12", and that restaurant portions have also dramatically increased as well. It's no wonder that nearly everywhere I go, I see too many obviously obese and overweight people. Obesity costs this country a whopping $144 billion in health care costs alone. It's staggering to think what we as a country are doing to ourselves by our mindless eating of junk food. This guy was saying that a toddler will typically eat until he or she is full and push the plate away, but in a few short years, if they are full, they will continue to eat mindlessly and ignore their body's signals that it is full. It's no wonder I am seeing more and more children that are far too heavy for their age and are going to suffer serious consequences as a result. We are raising the first generation of children who in all likelihood are going to live shorter lives than we are, and my generation isn't doing such a great job itself of living longer lives than our parents. Reading the obits on a daily basis, I see more people dying in their 40's and 50's of purely preventable things like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and certain cancers. It's sad and it frustrates me because all of us are paying the cost in higher health care bills. Some days I'd like to shout from the rooftops that we're dooming ourselves to being a nation of fat people and to please.....WAKE UP before it's too late! When we are a country where 7 in 10 people are overweight, there is something seriously wrong. I hope that reality TV shows like "The Biggest Loser", "Losing It With Jillian" and "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" will spur people into action to turn things around and change things for the better. One can only hope.
While working today on the bookmobile, a family came on and the mother registered three of her five children for library cards. Two of them already had cards so they didn't need to be signed up for them. After all was said and done, the family checked out - get this - 35 DVDs! So I'm sitting there figuring that if they watched them all in 7 days, that would mean five movies per day, at an average of two hours length per movie, meaning those kids would be sitting in front of the boob tube for 10 hours a day. Not all of the films they checked out were kids movies, either. In fact, the lion's share of them were violent adult "kill them all" movies, or violent scary horror movies. For such young children of tender years to be exposed to that sort of thing is appalling, and the mother kept screaming at the kids, "No books! No books!" even though they really wanted to take some out. One of the daughters did check out a stack of them but I was forced to check them back in again when the mother protested that she didn't want her daughter taking out any books, just movies. She checked out some "urban fiction" novels for herself and her teenaged daughter, but the younger children were only allowed movies. Worst of all, the entire family were obese, obviously lacking in exercise. Doubtless these kids are spending far too much time in a sedentary lifestyle in front of the electronic babysitter.
Today, one in three children is considered either overweight or obese. One in three! And 70% of Americans are overweight. I watched a news clip online last night that was an interview with a guy who wrote a book on mindful eating, and he mentioned that the average size of a dinner plate has increased in 50 years from 9" to 12", and that restaurant portions have also dramatically increased as well. It's no wonder that nearly everywhere I go, I see too many obviously obese and overweight people. Obesity costs this country a whopping $144 billion in health care costs alone. It's staggering to think what we as a country are doing to ourselves by our mindless eating of junk food. This guy was saying that a toddler will typically eat until he or she is full and push the plate away, but in a few short years, if they are full, they will continue to eat mindlessly and ignore their body's signals that it is full. It's no wonder I am seeing more and more children that are far too heavy for their age and are going to suffer serious consequences as a result. We are raising the first generation of children who in all likelihood are going to live shorter lives than we are, and my generation isn't doing such a great job itself of living longer lives than our parents. Reading the obits on a daily basis, I see more people dying in their 40's and 50's of purely preventable things like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and certain cancers. It's sad and it frustrates me because all of us are paying the cost in higher health care bills. Some days I'd like to shout from the rooftops that we're dooming ourselves to being a nation of fat people and to please.....WAKE UP before it's too late! When we are a country where 7 in 10 people are overweight, there is something seriously wrong. I hope that reality TV shows like "The Biggest Loser", "Losing It With Jillian" and "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" will spur people into action to turn things around and change things for the better. One can only hope.
2 comments:
Rough translation (from Google): Survival but continued fighting in the heart and soul; writing is sitting their trial.
Chinese visitor, always wise words from you! Thank you! I think I get the gist of what you are saying.
1. Your first sentence should be "While I was working ..." The way you wrote it says that it was the family that was working on the bookmobile.
2. Your Chinese "friend" is spamming you. His only purpose is to get his web site link published.
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