Our Fast Food Nation
May 30th 2008 02:27
Dear editor,
Australia has the fastest growing rate of obesity in the world. We are currently the second fattest country behind America, although we are rapidly becoming the fattest. Is this the future we really want for our country? Do we really want every second person to be obese? Obviously this isn’t the future we desire but there is still time to change our future. We need to teach our children how to obtain a healthy lifestyle. If children know what foods to eat and the amounts they should eat, they shouldn’t have any problems with eating healthily. Many experts wish for schools to adopt a healthy eating program because they believe it will determine the way they eat for the remainder of their lives. But on top of this, schools should make physical education compulsory. If schools teach children that sport is fun and also necessary to remain fit, children will adapt to the concept of sport and enjoy it. When teenagers progress in their schooling and get to VCE where school is very important, they often drop their sport subjects because they are marked down significantly. It has been proven by many reliable sources that children who play sport are able to concentrate for longer periods of time, and are often smarter than children who don’t play sport. If sport subjects were compulsory, kids would be happier, fitter and smarter. If our government adopts a few of these concepts, they could try a six months trial or something like that. If we change our lifestyle now before it is too late, obesity should no longer be a problem for our country.
Yours faithfully,
Katherine Nelson.
Australia has the fastest growing rate of obesity in the world. We are currently the second fattest country behind America, although we are rapidly becoming the fattest. Is this the future we really want for our country? Do we really want every second person to be obese? Obviously this isn’t the future we desire but there is still time to change our future. We need to teach our children how to obtain a healthy lifestyle. If children know what foods to eat and the amounts they should eat, they shouldn’t have any problems with eating healthily. Many experts wish for schools to adopt a healthy eating program because they believe it will determine the way they eat for the remainder of their lives. But on top of this, schools should make physical education compulsory. If schools teach children that sport is fun and also necessary to remain fit, children will adapt to the concept of sport and enjoy it. When teenagers progress in their schooling and get to VCE where school is very important, they often drop their sport subjects because they are marked down significantly. It has been proven by many reliable sources that children who play sport are able to concentrate for longer periods of time, and are often smarter than children who don’t play sport. If sport subjects were compulsory, kids would be happier, fitter and smarter. If our government adopts a few of these concepts, they could try a six months trial or something like that. If we change our lifestyle now before it is too late, obesity should no longer be a problem for our country.
Yours faithfully,
Katherine Nelson.
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Comment by kath
JFK made physical education mandatory in the late 1960's for the US, and before i read this blog, i thought we were still the fattest country in the world.
I think the problem is about the dramatic change to a sedentary lifestyle, as the direct result of the rapid advance in technology. yes, we can teach kids about physical education, but it does not prevent them from going back home to their Nintendos after school. And working out in a gym, or walking nowhere makes one feel like a hamster on a wheel.
We need to recognize the value of seeing physical human effort transformed into some kind of positive result in order to make a change to a healthier lifestyle. We need to be able to improve something, or help something good happen, physically, in order to continue to become more physically active, on an everyday basis. We need to feel we are contributing.