A Nation of Couch Potatoes By Walter Mills of Recipe
du Jour, printed in their great newsletter
It was the early sixties, the height of the Cold War. John Kennedy was
president and encouraging every one in the country to go along with him on
fifty-mile hikes. In elementary school we were timed and tape measured as we
ran for distance and practiced our high jumps and broad jumps. Fitness was a
national mania.
A few years before, President Eisenhower had read a report that claimed
European youth were in better shape than their U.S. counterparts. In
response, he created a Youth Fitness Council. When Kennedy came into office
he turned it into the President's Council on Physical Fitness and set an
example for the country to follow.
Most kids didn't need much encouragement. We never walked if we could run.
All of the boys I knew spent their summers on bikes. We would leave home
early in the morning and return for lunch, then be off again until dinner.
After supper was done, we would play games in the twilight until our mothers
called us home.
A new pair of sneakers lasted a couple of months before the soles wore out,
while the tops still looked brand new. We watched the Saturday morning shows
on television, but our mothers shooed us out the door after a couple of
hours. We drank colas in eight ounce bottles, but you needed to collect a
lot of empties to buy a soda. And the country store where I grew up was a
mile away. It was hard to get fat, easy to be fit.
But that was forty years ago and things have changed beyond recall. When
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said recently that as
a nation "we are too darn fat," nobody should have been surprised. According
to the Center for Disease Control, sixty per cent of adults are overweight;
twenty per cent are obese. It's hard to miss.
Without the Cold War as incentive, I don't think we care very much anymore
if European youth are in better shape than ours are. That's apparent,
because the rate of childhood obesity has doubled in the past twenty years.
We now have the fattest kids on earth.
It's not surprising. Not when there are soda and candy machines in the high
school lunchrooms, and soda companies buy advertising spots in the school
gymnasium. Not when physical education in grade school is reduced to 30 to
40 minutes once a week, or eliminated entirely in the upper grades.
These are choices we have made more by default than consciously. They
indicate that physical fitness is far down on the list of priorities, cut
back like music and art to an afterthought. As usual, we have no one to
blame but ourselves for the sorry shape of many of our children. We are
probably the ones setting them the example.
As parents we've gotten too scared to let our children bike to the woods or
play outside in the dark. We'd rather let them stay safe inside and play
computer games and watch television to the point where running and jumping
have become like chores to them. If it weren't for the organized sports such
as soccer and softball which are sustained by a small core of volunteers,
most of our kids would never get outside on their own.
The response from the federal government, which is to require better product
labeling, is laughably inadequate. It isn't going to inspire anyone in quite
the same way that JFK inspired the nation to get fit. Maybe a few of us will
take the time to read through the food labels and make some kind of informed
decision. Kids aren't likely to do that.
The dreary end of winter is a hard time to be reminded that we need to put
away the snacks and get off our duffs. But spring is almost here, and it's
time for a new commitment. Let's get out our bikes and ride like we did when
we were kids. Let's make our children ride with us.
