Poisoned apples.
Now that the election's over and sanity has returned to the world (and I no longer have to look at Sarah Palin's bigoted face all over the news), we can talk about more interesting things.
Like: your kids are probably eating garbage at school.
It all started when I caught this interesting Times article at work this morning. Then I found myself singing along to REM on the way to a legal consultation (again, work-related). Well, sort of singing along. What I was butchering sounded kind of like
loooosing my nutrition
Trying to keep up with food
And I dont know if I can do it
Oh no Ive had too much
I havent fed enough...
Because, you see, right now I work for the county health department (please oh please let this get me into a good doctoral program) as an environmental specialist. My specialty is epidemiology of insect-vectored diseases, but being the new kid on the governmental block, I get to tag along on all kinds of cool health-department-related issues. Like the time I met the mayor to help bust a drug house that also contained a dog-fighting setup. Or the time I helped get a woman out of her house who was in such bad shape that her legs were gangrenous and weighed forty pounds apiece due to the fluid and infection. Or today, when I got called on to be the official voice in a case that will probably make local news, about a school feeding its children expired, moldy food.
But. That wasn't what upset me. The thing that upset me was, rather than bruised apples and moldy whole-wheat bread, these kids were getting old and grody junk food. And this wasn't the ghetto either, folks.
I stood in the midst of the cafeteria serving-line, trying to see over the heads of third-graders that surpassed me in height (and wondering all the while if growth hormones and preservatives weren't to blame for the gargantuan size of kids these days). I'd already been in back with the senior investigator, taking samples and photographing expiration dates. This was far out of my league as a biologist, but I had a deep curiosity about the eating habits of children in America today, since my eating habits are (I think) pretty good. M and I are quasi-vegetarian, and almost never eat any processed foods. Actually, I think 95% of my diet consists of vegetables, fruits, oats/flax/barley/wheat germ, yoghurt, soy products like tofu, and fish. I eat chocolate and drink red wine sometimes; we drink lots of tea and only use olive oil. And I think it shows; my total cholesterol is 120, my blood pressure always below 90/55.
Before me, spread out in all the colorful bounty that only pre-wrapped flash-frozen-then-thawed irradiated goodness could provide, were:
Smucker's Uncrustables sandwiches
Hostess miniature cherry pies
Bags of Cheetos puffed cheese snacks
Pizza slices
French fries (fried in trans-fat containing oil -- I peeked in the kitchen)
Celery sticks (with full-fat Hidden Valley ranch dressing)
Nary an apple or orange. Not a single whole-wheat bread sandwich or granola bar (even though I think they're almost as bad as candy bars). Milk, yes; they had whole, 2% and chocolate options. But no orange juice even -- this fine youth-education establishment had Turner's Orange drink.
If I were a parent, I would have forcibly dragged my child from that room.
The only green in on the walls.
The prevalence of childhood obesity in America is ridiculous -- the CDC says that just under 20% of kids are obese. NHANES, the National Health Survey board, did a study recently and demonstrated a statistically significant increase in the number of obese children over the past 40 years:
For kids under 11;
1963-70: 4.2%
1971-74: 4.0%
1976-80: 6.5%
1988-94: 11.3%
1999-2000: 15.1%
2001-02: 16.3%
2003-04: 18.8%
The numbers for teenagers are similar. Nutritionists think we have many more kids with weight-related problems than our parents did. And I don't think it's that kids are lazier -- the ones I saw in the school today bore some resemblence to capuchin monkeys given methamphetamines (seriously). The ones in the playground were running, climbing, throwing balls, regardless of their weights.
The biggest factor in our kids' health problems today, I think, is when we're feeding growing bodies and brains nothing but refined starches, refined sugars, preservatives, trans fatty acids, wood esters, food dyes and caffeine
...and leaving out fiber, protein and dozens of vital nutrients (how many American kids eat 2-3 servings of fatty fish a week? Eat their 4-6 veggies a day? Or get 30 grams of fiber?)...
Then we're slowing killing them. Don't you think? And I know, not all schools are like this anymore -- a colleague told me of a magnet school in the county that just began a program with the local farmer's markets to bring more produce to children. But from what I remember seeing (and I was in high school less than a decade ago) and heard from the teachers in the lunchroom today, the majority of schools are still serving... poison.
And aren't you glad I didn't write a post about how horrible Sarah Palin is?
Like: your kids are probably eating garbage at school.
It all started when I caught this interesting Times article at work this morning. Then I found myself singing along to REM on the way to a legal consultation (again, work-related). Well, sort of singing along. What I was butchering sounded kind of like
loooosing my nutrition
Trying to keep up with food
And I dont know if I can do it
Oh no Ive had too much
I havent fed enough...
Because, you see, right now I work for the county health department (please oh please let this get me into a good doctoral program) as an environmental specialist. My specialty is epidemiology of insect-vectored diseases, but being the new kid on the governmental block, I get to tag along on all kinds of cool health-department-related issues. Like the time I met the mayor to help bust a drug house that also contained a dog-fighting setup. Or the time I helped get a woman out of her house who was in such bad shape that her legs were gangrenous and weighed forty pounds apiece due to the fluid and infection. Or today, when I got called on to be the official voice in a case that will probably make local news, about a school feeding its children expired, moldy food.
But. That wasn't what upset me. The thing that upset me was, rather than bruised apples and moldy whole-wheat bread, these kids were getting old and grody junk food. And this wasn't the ghetto either, folks.
I stood in the midst of the cafeteria serving-line, trying to see over the heads of third-graders that surpassed me in height (and wondering all the while if growth hormones and preservatives weren't to blame for the gargantuan size of kids these days). I'd already been in back with the senior investigator, taking samples and photographing expiration dates. This was far out of my league as a biologist, but I had a deep curiosity about the eating habits of children in America today, since my eating habits are (I think) pretty good. M and I are quasi-vegetarian, and almost never eat any processed foods. Actually, I think 95% of my diet consists of vegetables, fruits, oats/flax/barley/wheat germ, yoghurt, soy products like tofu, and fish. I eat chocolate and drink red wine sometimes; we drink lots of tea and only use olive oil. And I think it shows; my total cholesterol is 120, my blood pressure always below 90/55.
Before me, spread out in all the colorful bounty that only pre-wrapped flash-frozen-then-thawed irradiated goodness could provide, were:
Smucker's Uncrustables sandwiches
Hostess miniature cherry pies
Bags of Cheetos puffed cheese snacks
Pizza slices
French fries (fried in trans-fat containing oil -- I peeked in the kitchen)
Celery sticks (with full-fat Hidden Valley ranch dressing)
Nary an apple or orange. Not a single whole-wheat bread sandwich or granola bar (even though I think they're almost as bad as candy bars). Milk, yes; they had whole, 2% and chocolate options. But no orange juice even -- this fine youth-education establishment had Turner's Orange drink.
If I were a parent, I would have forcibly dragged my child from that room.
The only green in on the walls.
The prevalence of childhood obesity in America is ridiculous -- the CDC says that just under 20% of kids are obese. NHANES, the National Health Survey board, did a study recently and demonstrated a statistically significant increase in the number of obese children over the past 40 years:
For kids under 11;
1963-70: 4.2%
1971-74: 4.0%
1976-80: 6.5%
1988-94: 11.3%
1999-2000: 15.1%
2001-02: 16.3%
2003-04: 18.8%
The numbers for teenagers are similar. Nutritionists think we have many more kids with weight-related problems than our parents did. And I don't think it's that kids are lazier -- the ones I saw in the school today bore some resemblence to capuchin monkeys given methamphetamines (seriously). The ones in the playground were running, climbing, throwing balls, regardless of their weights.
The biggest factor in our kids' health problems today, I think, is when we're feeding growing bodies and brains nothing but refined starches, refined sugars, preservatives, trans fatty acids, wood esters, food dyes and caffeine
...and leaving out fiber, protein and dozens of vital nutrients (how many American kids eat 2-3 servings of fatty fish a week? Eat their 4-6 veggies a day? Or get 30 grams of fiber?)...
Then we're slowing killing them. Don't you think? And I know, not all schools are like this anymore -- a colleague told me of a magnet school in the county that just began a program with the local farmer's markets to bring more produce to children. But from what I remember seeing (and I was in high school less than a decade ago) and heard from the teachers in the lunchroom today, the majority of schools are still serving... poison.
And aren't you glad I didn't write a post about how horrible Sarah Palin is?