What is causing obesity and what we can do about it
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One solution suggested for the problem of obesity is increasing education, teaching about the food pyramid, the importance of eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and so on. Unfortunately, these programs have limited success. Most of the people who are overweight, or who never exercise, or smoke cigarettes or drink too much beer, know it is bad for them.
Even children realize that being too fat makes you less likely to get picked for everything from the team for basketball at recess to the high school prom date. |
Here is a simple solution - try to make healthy foods more available and snack foods less so. In the middle of writing this page, I went into the living room where my eight-year-old daughter and her eight-year-old friend were watching TV and eating goldfish crackers out of the bag. As I picked up the bag of gold fish, I announced:
"We're goinng to have a taste-testing."
"Can Kiah do it, too?" my daughter asked.
"Of course. The test is what tastes best to third-graders."
I said, as I sliced an orange into four pieces, put it on a plate and handed it to them. Total time required, less than ten seconds. They gave two thumbs up to the oranges and spent some time pretending the orange peels were teeth and then duck bills.
"Next test is some cheese I bought at the store. The lady told me it was the type little kids like. I want your opinions."
If I had them, I would have used toothpicks, but since I am SO not Martha Stewart, I didn't find any in the cupboard and just gave them each a small slice of cheese on a plate. Heck, I'm lucky I found a plate.
"Next is apples. Tell me which is better, the apples, the cheese or the oranges."
I cut an apple in half and shook cinnamon on each half.
"Definitely the oranges," the girls said, with their mouths still full of apple, "Do you have anything else?"
"I have a different kind of cheese. I don't know if it is for kids or not. Would you like to try it?"
They nodded so I cut off a couple of slices of that as well.
"It's good, "
they both agreed, and my daughter asked,
"Can I have some more of that white kind of cheese, the kid kind?"
In the space of 45 seconds, they have forgotten about the goldfish crackers, eaten orange slices, half an apple and a couple of cheese slices. They are full and back to watching TV. Here is the simple trick - the food was there in front of them. Just for good measure, I put the goldfish, Cheese curls and the twinkie my daughter had bought at the store last night in the back of the cupboard. In the front, I put a bag of raisins. Like most kids, she is likely to eat the first thing she sees when she opens the cupboard. In the refrigerator, I put the bag of oranges and the bag of apples on the bottom shelf. I shoved the flavored yogurt and jello to the back of the top shelf, behind the bottles of milk and juice.
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Next: More on environmental changes and why they work |