Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh, good. Another fat hating post.i I was just thinking it was time for some self righteous thin person to tell the MAJORITY of us what we're doing wrong, and how it all boils down to my desire for six flat screen TVs.

Please tell me your job requires no thinking, OP.

+1. Don't have one flat screen TV, much less six. Don't even have a car. I walk everywhere, don't eat fast food, and I'm still overweight. I don't know why, but I'm sure OP and the legions of sanctimonious DCUM posters will tell me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"So schools are supposed to prevent children from being fat, as well as educate them in academic subjects? Isn't anything the parents' job nowadays? You'd like the schools to serve as fat camps as well?

No it is not the job of the schools."

Of course it is. Why do you think we adopted universal free education in this country? It wasn't just to educate people in academic subjects; it was to form good citizens to benefit our society and shore up our democracy.

In any event, I'll throw in another culprit, which is how our food is grown and processed in this country. It isn't easy to eat really clean food - food that hasn't been genetically modified, hasn't been processed with chemicals. Think about cooking oil - the molecular structure changes when it is made through a warm pressed vs. cold pressed method, which is the cheapest and most common way to do it. So even people cooking from scratch made be using oil that has been processed in a way that our bodies are not used to. Same with so many other ingredients. Grain fed vs. grass fed beef differ nutritionally. My theory is that we're not getting the nutrients we need, which makes us crave more/eat more food in general. Couple that with the wide-scale availability of foods that we know are not good for us but we want anyway, and it is really hard to maintain a normal weight.

Schools can serve healthy food, talk about nutrition, and run kids for hours, but when the kid comes to school with a Coke in one hand a bag of Cheetos in the other (bought by a parent at the hot dog stand down the street), the whole "healthy food" message is diluted.

I don't get it why American schools serve any food to begin with. It really amazes me. I am an immigrant and went to school in Europe. There was no kitchen in my school. Some students ate snacks during recess (that they brought from home or purchased in neighboring stores) but most children didn't eat anything. You ate before you go to school and then when you get home. It's not like you anybody starved though there were very few (like 1 per 30) overweight children.

My kids get on the school bus at 8:30 am and off about 4 pm. I can't imagine not feeding them for 7.5 hours...

But why? What would happen if they didn't eat for 8 hours?

Low blood sugar, inability to concentrate, irritability. Get a clue. I teach Pre-K and can't imagine my kids not eating for eight hours. What a nightmare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The same is true for adults. At work, folks send an email rather than walk the 10 feet or so to actually speak to a colleague. At home, we can't even be bothered to get off our asses to change the channels on the television. Our dishes are washed in a machine. Our clothes are washed and dried in a machine. Our food is quick and easy to obtain. We simply do not have to perform very many physical tasks during the day. Those of us who value our health find ways to stay active. But it takes effort. And that goes back to my main point. People are overweight because they are lazy. They lack the inner drive necessary to really exercise. Power walking doesn't count. Gentle Yoga doesn't count. Swimming a few laps in the pool doesn't count. Walking on a treadmill doesn't help. If you are not uncomfortable while you are exercising, you're wasting your time. It hurts like hell to run 26.3 miles. But you push through the pain every single day while training and you give everything you've got (and then a little more) on race day. The same can be said for any endurance sport. If you're going to work out, it's going to hurt. You are going to be exhausted. You are going to sweat. You might throw up. You either want it or you don't. Half assing your way through a zumba class just doesn't cut it. There is no magic diet. You have to work for it.

You are super dramatic. I just worked out this morning and wasn't in any "crazy pain!!"

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"So schools are supposed to prevent children from being fat, as well as educate them in academic subjects? Isn't anything the parents' job nowadays? You'd like the schools to serve as fat camps as well?

No it is not the job of the schools."

Of course it is. Why do you think we adopted universal free education in this country? It wasn't just to educate people in academic subjects; it was to form good citizens to benefit our society and shore up our democracy.

In any event, I'll throw in another culprit, which is how our food is grown and processed in this country. It isn't easy to eat really clean food - food that hasn't been genetically modified, hasn't been processed with chemicals. Think about cooking oil - the molecular structure changes when it is made through a warm pressed vs. cold pressed method, which is the cheapest and most common way to do it. So even people cooking from scratch made be using oil that has been processed in a way that our bodies are not used to. Same with so many other ingredients. Grain fed vs. grass fed beef differ nutritionally. My theory is that we're not getting the nutrients we need, which makes us crave more/eat more food in general. Couple that with the wide-scale availability of foods that we know are not good for us but we want anyway, and it is really hard to maintain a normal weight.

Schools can serve healthy food, talk about nutrition, and run kids for hours, but when the kid comes to school with a Coke in one hand a bag of Cheetos in the other (bought by a parent at the hot dog stand down the street), the whole "healthy food" message is diluted.

I don't get it why American schools serve any food to begin with. It really amazes me. I am an immigrant and went to school in Europe. There was no kitchen in my school. Some students ate snacks during recess (that they brought from home or purchased in neighboring stores) but most children didn't eat anything. You ate before you go to school and then when you get home. It's not like you anybody starved though there were very few (like 1 per 30) overweight children.

My kids get on the school bus at 8:30 am and off about 4 pm. I can't imagine not feeding them for 7.5 hours...

But why? What would happen if they didn't eat for 8 hours?

They would be so hungry they wouldn't be able to concentrate on their work.

Anonymous wrote:

The same is true for adults. At work, folks send an email rather than walk the 10 feet or so to actually speak to a colleague. At home, we can't even be bothered to get off our asses to change the channels on the television. Our dishes are washed in a machine. Our clothes are washed and dried in a machine. Our food is quick and easy to obtain. We simply do not have to perform very many physical tasks during the day. Those of us who value our health find ways to stay active. But it takes effort. And that goes back to my main point. People are overweight because they are lazy. They lack the inner drive necessary to really exercise. Power walking doesn't count. Gentle Yoga doesn't count. Swimming a few laps in the pool doesn't count. Walking on a treadmill doesn't help. If you are not uncomfortable while you are exercising, you're wasting your time. It hurts like hell to run 26.3 miles. But you push through the pain every single day while training and you give everything you've got (and then a little more) on race day. The same can be said for any endurance sport. If you're going to work out, it's going to hurt. You are going to be exhausted. You are going to sweat. You might throw up. You either want it or you don't. Half assing your way through a zumba class just doesn't cut it. There is no magic diet. You have to work for it.

You are super dramatic. I just worked out this morning and wasn't in any "crazy pain!!"

Anonymous wrote:

The same is true for adults. At work, folks send an email rather than walk the 10 feet or so to actually speak to a colleague. At home, we can't even be bothered to get off our asses to change the channels on the television. Our dishes are washed in a machine. Our clothes are washed and dried in a machine. Our food is quick and easy to obtain. We simply do not have to perform very many physical tasks during the day. Those of us who value our health find ways to stay active. But it takes effort. And that goes back to my main point. People are overweight because they are lazy. They lack the inner drive necessary to really exercise. Power walking doesn't count. Gentle Yoga doesn't count. Swimming a few laps in the pool doesn't count. Walking on a treadmill doesn't help. If you are not uncomfortable while you are exercising, you're wasting your time. It hurts like hell to run 26.3 miles. But you push through the pain every single day while training and you give everything you've got (and then a little more) on race day. The same can be said for any endurance sport. If you're going to work out, it's going to hurt. You are going to be exhausted. You are going to sweat. You might throw up. You either want it or you don't. Half assing your way through a zumba class just doesn't cut it. There is no magic diet. You have to work for it.

Anonymous wrote:Oh, good. Another fat hating post.i I was just thinking it was time for some self righteous thin person to tell the MAJORITY of us what we're doing wrong, and how it all boils down to my desire for six flat screen TVs.

Please tell me your job requires no thinking, OP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH grew up in SA and had lunch at school, which was steak and veggies. When he came to the US in HS and saw macaroni and cheese, he said he wanted to vomit. (Now he likes it, btw.) Not all schools abroad do not provide lunch or lunchtime for kids. Where were you, PP?!

I was in Eastern Europe.

Well, no wonder. If that was during the Cold War there was no food to serve. I remember when I visited East Berlin. In the Lebensmittelgeschaeft there was like one can of peas on the shelf.

PP, did you see bears walking the street as well? I also went to school in Eastern Europe. Our kitchen was pretty basic, and only some of the older students took advantage of it, probably because, as a PP pointed out, the second meal of the day in our culture is traditionally around 3pm, not noon. Most schools in the f.USSR did provide a subsidized meal to the primary grade students. For the same reason as in the US -- they wanted to make sure that even kids living in squalor had at least one hot meal a day.

What I'd like to know is since when did the US school boards decide that this one meal could consist of prison-grade chicken nuggets? I started school in the USSR in the late 80s. The big empire was falling apart. Corruption was rampant. There were shortages of everything. We stood in line for hours to buy a bag of sugar. And yet the lunch I ate at school was infinitely more nutritious than the crap they feed my daughter in one of the richest school districts in the US.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH grew up in SA and had lunch at school, which was steak and veggies. When he came to the US in HS and saw macaroni and cheese, he said he wanted to vomit. (Now he likes it, btw.) Not all schools abroad do not provide lunch or lunchtime for kids. Where were you, PP?!

I was in Eastern Europe.

Well, no wonder. If that was during the Cold War there was no food to serve. I remember when I visited East Berlin. In the Lebensmittelgeschaeft there was like one can of peas on the shelf.