The junk-food battle is on

By Joel Myhre (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, July 19, 2008

So every evening after we get home from day care, my daughter and I have a conversation around the same subject: what she can have for a snack.

Her idea, of course, is to raid the part of the pantry where the candy she gathered up at the recent Fourth of July parade sits. (Though I believe my wife, successfully, has hid the bulk of it.) My idea is to find something, anything healthy, whether it be fruit, yogurt, or a piece of whole grain bread. Usually, we end up somewhere in the middle. Maybe she’ll get pudding one day (not the best thing to eat, but with the milk in it, certainly better than a candy bar). Some days, she’ll actually submit and accept that she’s eating fruit for a snack. And some days, lacking fight in me, I’ll submit and give her a piece of candy. Of course, while my wife and I are on the same page on this one, others around us tend to throw a wrench in the healthy food plan, since they enjoy getting in our daughter’s good graces while we’re the bad guys. The other daily battle is whether my daughter sits in front of the TV (usually with her snack), or goes outside to swing, ride her bike and roam the yard. I have been less firm about this one, and I clearly need to make sure the two of us get outdoors.

Based on what I’ve seen from other parents with children my daughter’s age, this kind of daily battle takes place around the country. And based on the newest statistics, many parents in our recent past lost the battle long ago, and their children will soon be paying the price.

Released Thursday by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga., a study found that more than one-quarter of American adults reported being obese in 2007, that is up 1.7 percent from the last time the survey was conducted in 2005. Between 25 and 29 percent of adults in Minnesota are obese, according to the survey. We’re not as fit as those in Colorado, but more fit than southeastern states such as Tennessee and Mississippi.

Regardless, we Minnesotans are getting fatter. And by process of deductive reasoning, there are two primary reasons why we are getting fatter: we’re consuming more calories, and burning fewer of them than we were before.

What bothers me is the fact that our leaders in public education – and I’m primarily talking to leaders at the highest levels – have failed to make physical education as big of a priority, or at least close to it, as reading and math.

According to an article by the national PTA, just during the past decade, the number of U.S. high school students attending daily physical education classes dropped from 42 to 29 percent. Currently, nearly half of all students and 75 percent of high school students do not attend any physical education classes, according to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE), the nation's largest organization for physical education teachers.

For some reason, the way things work is that, once kids reach high school age, the best athletes are on the sports teams, and everyone else stops participating in physical activities. They focus on work, academics, and, apparently, video games.

I wasn’t much different. Though I enjoyed sports, I was too short and slow to earn playing time in anything except golf, so I quit and worked. As I recall a fellow student telling me, I had a bit of a doughnut around my gut my senior year.

I understand that school finances are tough these days, and that subjects such as math, science and reading still need top billing. But we need to get back to requiring physical education classes for students, all the way through graduation. We as a society have to recognize that even the kids who won’t make the varsity teams still need physical activity, and they might actually enjoy it.

In this case, sports isn’t about winning. It’s about living.

Joel Myhre is The Journal’s general manager. E-mail him at joel.myhre@fergusfallsjournal.com