Ensuring Our Children's Health: It Can Be Done
Deborah Szekely is an outstanding woman, long recognized as a, if not the, founder of the modern health and fitness movement. She has served on health and fitness councils under a variety of presidents. Recently she teamed up with Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, to write about health care reform. Their ideas --if put into action, will --at little cost--do more for health care than all the versions of the bills now being debated in Congress.
They start from the premise that we'll never control health care costs until we halt the nationwide epidemic of overeating, lack of exercise, and obesity. Currently, among America's children -- nearly one in three youngsters, from age 2 to 19, is overweight, and approximately 17% are dangerously obese.
But that does not mean that things cannot change. And, interestingly, they see children as the ones who can lead the way.
They point to some of the great health and environmental movements of the past half century: When children caught the anti-litter bug in the '50s and '60s, they lectured their parents every time a soda can went out the car window. Anti-smoking campaigns in the '60s and '70s succeeded when an entire generation -- the Baby Boomers -- begged their elders to stop. More recently, recycling has become a way of life because children embraced the notion of a more sustainable world. So their premise is simple: if children learn the skills of healthy living, they will lead their parents to healthier habits as well.
Accordingly, they urge the creation of a new national initiative in grade schools -- the Living Skills Semester -- with a curriculum designed specifically to prevent obesity by addressing knowledge and understanding of the human body, nutrition, fitness, and all that is required for a long, healthy, and happy life. They ask this thought-provoking question: What if fifth-grade American children receive an entire semester in which all classes in math, science, geography, language, history and the environment integrated existing fifth-grade educational requirements with studies of how the body functions; its nutritional and physical needs, and proper sources and preparation of healthy, fresh, nutritious foods?
They also urge Congress to enact bipartisan legislation introduced by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to modernize decades-old nutrition standards in the schools by covering not only student cafeteria meals but also the foods and beverages in the schools' vending machines. Schools should also be required to offer physical education to every student every day.
They also cite several examples of effective programs that can serve as models for the entire nation. For example, at Rutgers in New Jersey, HealthBarn USA offers children the opportunity to work on a farm and learn about nutrition by growing, harvesting, and cooking fresh seasonal food. The University of Massachusetts has developed Strength and Power in Nutrition (SPIN), a program that has been tailored to, and tested, with low-income, culturally diverse adolescents. Similarly, the Louisiana State University Agriculture Center conducts a traveling exhibit called Body Walk that has taken the message of healthy eating and frequent exercise to more than 125,000 children in more than 250 schools.
And if we fail to do this? The costs will be astronomical as an appalling 86% of Americans could be overweight within two decades. Obesity-related medical bills will amount to almost $1 trillion. As they write, "The solution is prevention via education, and it must start now."
