Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Children 'not exercising enough'
Children ‘not exercising enough’
I remember as a kid (in primary school) we use to go swimming with school once a week. At this time (just over twenty years ago) there only use to be one or two overweight (we used the word fat) kids out of a class of about thirty. To be honest they weren’t even that ‘fat’, soft would be a better term.
How times have changed - Just the other week I was doing a few laps at the local swimming pool and in all honesty out of about fourty- eight to ten year olds I could not see a rib or an abdominal muscle anywhere, in fact I don’t think under all the blubber there was any muscle anywhere.
What’s going on?
A lot of things are going on. Or not going on depending on how you look at things. Two of the main reasons for the increase in ‘fatness’ in the last twenty years are:
1. The modern diet is too full of sugar
2. We are just not active enough
Sugar is a huge problem. Never in the history of man have we ever had such an over abundance of sugar. It’s no coincidence that the rise in metabolic disease (diabetes, CHD, obesity) and the link to sugar is becoming more and more apparent.
Why do we like sugar and have an affinity for sweet things? – The answer is Evolution. Sugar provides us with energy and without it we would not survive. We can’t survive without fat (or protein for that matter) either but naturally we use to get this in the correct amounts, animal fat, vegetable fat, nuts and seeds. As a survival mechanism (in times when food is scarce) excess sugar can be converted and stored as fat so we can survive.
Our bodies haven’t changed since we stopped swinging from trees- since we evolved, so we still convert and store excess sugar as fat. Fast forward to now we have a whole lot of excess sugar in our diets and therefore a whole lot more is getting stored as fat.
Science and nutritional bodies didn't initially help, either they didn't know or they knew and didn't tell us but high carbohydrate (is sugar or converts to sugar) low fat diets were quite in vogue in the 80’s and 90’s. Think of the old food pyramid- breads and cereals, fruits (all sugars) and vegetables were on the bottom two tiers. Fats were on the top. The theory and reasoning outside of the conspiracy theories (concerning the billion dollar wheat and sugar industries) was the thought process that fat makes us fat. This is true to an extent but what was missed out on was that excess sugar also makes us fat.
And we certainly have an excess, especially considering our inactive lives. It’s well documented that we don’t partake in enough physical activity. Nobody walks anywhere anymore, especially not kids, there is less PE, sports and activities in our schools. The streets and roads are too busy and unsafe to play in- we just don’t move anymore. According to the British Heart Foundation ‘Children living in inner-city areas are not getting enough exercise … '. Other interesting statistics from the British Heart Foundation’s study: ‘found more than half of schoolchildren asked watched tv or played computer games for more than four hours every day... less than half said they exercised at break or walked to school … the level of inactivity was worse among girls … ’ (taken from a story from BBC NEWS/Health 23/11/2007).
Combine our current inactive lifestyles (not much energy expended) with our high sugar diets (more energy in) and we have an energy surplus. If this energy isn’t being used we store it as a fat. Hence there were so many soft (fat) kids at my swimming pool.
None of this is news. But we still don’t seem to be doing much about it.
Can anything be done? The answer is that a lot can be done.
Firstly we need to consume a lot less sugar in our diets. Secondly we need to exercise or at least be more active. A lot easier said than done- not really.
Concerning less sugar in our diets we need to start reading labels to check how much sugar there is (be careful of low fat foods these are normally extremely high in sugar). The majority of our sugar should come from fruit and vegetables anything else will be processed.
Concerning more exercise or activity we need to find a sport, go the gym, but generally we just have to do more, move more, walk more, walk to the shops, take the stairs increase activity more of the time. Don’t watch as much telly, or eat that doughnut, can the video games; get outside and move!
We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and for our children, parents need to not let their kids eat so much (particularly), fair enough they can’t control what their children put into their mouths but they can control what’s in the cupboards and fridges!
BJ Rule
I remember as a kid (in primary school) we use to go swimming with school once a week. At this time (just over twenty years ago) there only use to be one or two overweight (we used the word fat) kids out of a class of about thirty. To be honest they weren’t even that ‘fat’, soft would be a better term.
How times have changed - Just the other week I was doing a few laps at the local swimming pool and in all honesty out of about fourty- eight to ten year olds I could not see a rib or an abdominal muscle anywhere, in fact I don’t think under all the blubber there was any muscle anywhere.
What’s going on?
A lot of things are going on. Or not going on depending on how you look at things. Two of the main reasons for the increase in ‘fatness’ in the last twenty years are:
1. The modern diet is too full of sugar
2. We are just not active enough
Sugar is a huge problem. Never in the history of man have we ever had such an over abundance of sugar. It’s no coincidence that the rise in metabolic disease (diabetes, CHD, obesity) and the link to sugar is becoming more and more apparent.
Why do we like sugar and have an affinity for sweet things? – The answer is Evolution. Sugar provides us with energy and without it we would not survive. We can’t survive without fat (or protein for that matter) either but naturally we use to get this in the correct amounts, animal fat, vegetable fat, nuts and seeds. As a survival mechanism (in times when food is scarce) excess sugar can be converted and stored as fat so we can survive.
Our bodies haven’t changed since we stopped swinging from trees- since we evolved, so we still convert and store excess sugar as fat. Fast forward to now we have a whole lot of excess sugar in our diets and therefore a whole lot more is getting stored as fat.
Science and nutritional bodies didn't initially help, either they didn't know or they knew and didn't tell us but high carbohydrate (is sugar or converts to sugar) low fat diets were quite in vogue in the 80’s and 90’s. Think of the old food pyramid- breads and cereals, fruits (all sugars) and vegetables were on the bottom two tiers. Fats were on the top. The theory and reasoning outside of the conspiracy theories (concerning the billion dollar wheat and sugar industries) was the thought process that fat makes us fat. This is true to an extent but what was missed out on was that excess sugar also makes us fat.
And we certainly have an excess, especially considering our inactive lives. It’s well documented that we don’t partake in enough physical activity. Nobody walks anywhere anymore, especially not kids, there is less PE, sports and activities in our schools. The streets and roads are too busy and unsafe to play in- we just don’t move anymore. According to the British Heart Foundation ‘Children living in inner-city areas are not getting enough exercise … '. Other interesting statistics from the British Heart Foundation’s study: ‘found more than half of schoolchildren asked watched tv or played computer games for more than four hours every day... less than half said they exercised at break or walked to school … the level of inactivity was worse among girls … ’ (taken from a story from BBC NEWS/Health 23/11/2007).
Combine our current inactive lifestyles (not much energy expended) with our high sugar diets (more energy in) and we have an energy surplus. If this energy isn’t being used we store it as a fat. Hence there were so many soft (fat) kids at my swimming pool.
None of this is news. But we still don’t seem to be doing much about it.
Can anything be done? The answer is that a lot can be done.
Firstly we need to consume a lot less sugar in our diets. Secondly we need to exercise or at least be more active. A lot easier said than done- not really.
Concerning less sugar in our diets we need to start reading labels to check how much sugar there is (be careful of low fat foods these are normally extremely high in sugar). The majority of our sugar should come from fruit and vegetables anything else will be processed.
Concerning more exercise or activity we need to find a sport, go the gym, but generally we just have to do more, move more, walk more, walk to the shops, take the stairs increase activity more of the time. Don’t watch as much telly, or eat that doughnut, can the video games; get outside and move!
We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and for our children, parents need to not let their kids eat so much (particularly), fair enough they can’t control what their children put into their mouths but they can control what’s in the cupboards and fridges!
BJ Rule
posted by Tommy Matthews @ 14:57
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