A recent piece in the New York Times mentioned statistics that indicate that an alarming percentage of children will develop diabetes as adults. On CNN, we see regular articles on the obesity epidemic in children.

The culprits are easy to identify: Increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and increasingly horrific dietary practices. Children are now sent to some form of “education” activity from the age of three or four, the “pre-school.” By the age of six, they begin “regular” school, and for the next twelve impressionable and developmental years, they will spend at least six or seven hours seated in a classroom, with maybe a few minutes’ break once or twice for “recess” or walking down to the lunchroom, where they will be served – but we will get to that. First let’s talk about how they get to school and back. They ride. In a car or in a bus, they get another couple of hours of sitting. Rare is the child in the US who walks to school. If there are no logistical impediments, such as distance, 8 lane expressways, etc., there are safety concerns.

Once home from school, the most popular and probable activities are more sitting – to watch TV, to play computer games, to do homework. Gone are those days when kids walked ten miles to school each day through the snow, and had one shirt and washed it every day and made it shine. There are a thousand reasons why walking ten miles to school in today’s world would not be either practical or advisable. Kids also no longer get up at 3:30 AM to milk the cows before that snowy walk, nor do they come home from school and pick a hundred pounds of cotton in the broiling sun before supper. (Weather tended to be extremely changeable back then). Continue reading →