Pound-Foolish
We no longer can afford to cut physical education and good nutrition.
A century ago, overweight often was a superficial sign of prosperity and good living. High-society dinners of the Gilded Age, for example, consisted of four, five, six, and sometimes even more courses: caviar, foie gras, oysters, terrapin, game. Such dinners certainly gave new meaning to Thorstein Veblen's 1899 phrase "conspicuous consumption." But why not live it up if you could, when you could? After all, the life expectancy in 1900 was only about 47 years. Fortunately, few people ate so lavishly then, and since the Gilded Age we have been able to peer beneath the surface to understand the effects of nutrition—good and bad—on the human body. Additionally, advances in science and medicine nearly have eliminated in America the infectious diseases that reached epidemic proportions a hundred years ago. Despite opening with a life expectancy of about 47 years, the 20th century successfully closed with a life expectancy of about 77 years.
What took a century to attain, however, could be undermined in a few decades if we do not respond to the 21st century's own epidemic: obesity. While as a nation we have made serious strides in improving our health in terms of infectious diseases, heart disease, and several forms of cancer, we have failed when it comes to recognizing, understanding, and addressing our overweight and its effects on our health. Indeed, the Age of Girth has displaced the Gilded Age. Then, few people enjoyed overeating and indulgence; now, most of us are swayed by super sizes. The bicycle craze of a hundred years ago, moreover, has been replaced by the television craze of today. Consequently, obesity is this century's pneumonia. It is this century's TB. It is this century's typhoid. Obesity is not an aesthetic issue; it is a health one. It may not be infectious, but it is epidemic: In 1999, an estimated 61 percent of U.S. adults were overweight or obese, and 13 percent of children and adolescents were overweight.
Fortunately, curing obesity in most cases does not take years of complex research; instead, it takes behavioral change enabled by comprehensive actions on the part of individuals, families, schools, communities, worksites, media, states, and the nation. Of these enablers, schools hold perhaps the most crucial role in effecting change, for adult obesity can be prevented in youth. As I suggest in my December 2001 "Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity," schools are identified as one of five key settings for public-health strategies to prevent and decrease the prevalence of overweight and obesity via a CARE framework, which stands for communication, action, research, and evaluation. The basic fact of the matter is that children and adolescents spend a large portion of time in school, and schools offer many existing and potential opportunities to engage them in healthy eating and physical activity to reinforce positive messages about diet and exercise. At the risk of sounding trite, I will reiterate that today's youths are tomorrow's leaders. We must prime our children academically, but academic success will be moot if a student does not realize her or his potential because of poor health...
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