Food for Thought
The average American male is 5 feet 9.1 inches tall and weighs 195.7 pounds, while the average American woman stands slightly less than 5’4” and weighs 170.5 pounds. Now your personal ‘wokism’ may believe in additional genders, with a plurality of pronouns, but I’ll leave it at that.
The weights for the average American in the year 1960 were 166.2 for males and 140 pounds for women. While there are assuredly a number of factors for the additional poundage, the most consequential contributing factors would be the government food guide, the proliferation of fast food restaurants, and a deficiency in exercise.
We could produce a chart relative to the weights of children, but there is the age and variability of constant growth until adulthood so an average child's weight is not computable or quantifiable. However, our eyes can clearly tell us that childhood obesity is a problem, certainly in a ratio equivalent to that seen in adults. In steps the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) with statistics from the much-accurately maligned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Like the linked MSN article, the AAP does not go into any specifics or details relative to foods or exercise, it's straight to medications and/or surgery for anyone 12 years of age and over. Anyone under 12 would require 26 hours of counseling as it relates to behavior and lifestyle. In either case, the AAP recommends the abolition of the simple observation period or a delay in treatment as is often practiced now.
The AAP does not take the long-held adage, the one sung by Lynn Anderson in the song “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” namely “. . .look before you leap, still waters run deep”, no, it’s directly to medications or surgery and perhaps, in the case of both not working, both – sort of like acquiring a virtually untested vaccine that really doesn’t work even though the publicly appointed ‘experts’ said it would.
In childhood, each morning, my mother would cook eggs either fried or hard-boiled, never poached, but likely quite overdone for the average palate. On occasion, eggs were replaced by oatmeal while crepes or pancakes were an uncommon treat. My father fried bacon on the weekend. Mass-produced breakfast cereals were too expensive, however, I suspect that today it is the most common breakfast and the ones with soaring sugar content are the most prized. Pre-prepared, sugar-packed pancakes may come out of a freezer, into a toaster, and then be inundated with syrup.
According to an American Family Survey, only 54% of families eat meals together. This is up from a low of 43% between the years 2009 to 2021. This suggests that children may be hunting for food in their favorite fast-food restaurant or going to the refrigerator and shoving the salad aside to get at the prepared pizza bites or Pillsbury calzones chased down with Double-stuff Oreo cookies and an Arby's Jamocha Shake with 830 calories, mostly consisting of sugar. With the food hunt concluded, it’s off to their bedroom and a night of Xbox video games or lying around texting on the phone with friends.
Football, baseball, skipping, and bike riding for many just seem just so passé.
The Food Guide published by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempts to significantly reduce meats and fats of every kind. Instead, the guide extensively elevates the intake of carbohydrates. The Commissioner of the FDA, Robert Califf like all progressive political appointments, are directed to make climate change a central commitment and undertaking in their various departmental agendas and programs. This means the denunciation of meat as a preferred healthy food product – insects are the preferred alternative - for farting they do not.
Child obesity is definitely an issue, but genuine treatments like that of many other issues are hidden in partisan political agendas. This is clearly the case here.