Finally, Healthy Lunch Programs in Schools
Families across Western Pennsylvania and around the country are struggling financially because the economy is in a recession. More children go to bed with hunger or they have to adjust to eating cheaper, less healthy foods. The Congress is just dilly dallying, though many children depend on school and summer lunch programs as a primary source of food. The Act which funds all school meals, the Nutrition Act seems to be going nowhere; it’s in legislative limbo.
The new bill will upgrade current nutrition standards; more students will have access to reduced and reduced cost lunches and local framers can sell their produce to schools for the lunches. Though there is strong bipartisan support, Congress is not serious in enacting new legislation especially with the current law sets which will become ineffective by September end. Question is why is the bill being stalled, with all those important provisions? It is because of time and money.
Is Obesity Making Girls Hit Puberty Sooner?
Puberty is defined as the period in life when a person becomes sexually mature. Accordingly, puberty involves physical changes that usually happen between ages 10 and 14 for girls and ages 12 and 16 for boys. But what if your girls start puberty earlier than the normal age range?
My elder sister’s puberty stage started at age eight, while I started at age seven. As young girls, it was never easy to go through such dramatic changes at an early age, when all I could think of was school and play. But instead, we went through menstruation, breast enlargement and lots of other physical changes that we maybe should not have gone through. No one in our family (except my sister and me) has had precocious puberty. My mother was frightened during those times and so she brought us to doctor after doctor. At the time it seemed that my sister and I were the only girls in the world dealing with such problems, but recently doctors have begun to notice that it is becoming all too common.
Childhood and Adult Obesity Becoming a Major Public Health Threat
When kids eat too much and exercise less, tendency is they become obese. When obesity could not be controlled at a younger age, there’s a greater possibility that obesity continues on until adulthood. Subsequently, America is in panic.
In 2000, obesity rate was zero and in 2007, it was three. But obesity rates skyrocketed in 2010. In fact, more than 75 million adult Americans are officially obese and recent government data also shows that nine states had obesity rates of 30% or more compared to last year’s rates. Because of this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have referred to obesity as an “epidemic” and “a major public health threat” as well.
Schools say Bye to Junk Foods, Hello Healthy Snacks
First Lady Michelle Obama has been going an extra mile just to promote her “Let’s Move” campaign. She has speaking to various events and in all forms of media just so she can tell the world that it’s to get junk foods out of the picture and welcome healthy snacks for our own benefit. In her first-ever live chat in AOL Health, she talked about her “Let’s Move” project.She started the initiative to target childhood obesity. Through these efforts, children today and of the future generation can live healthier lives. But this project can not work with the First Lady at all and so the project also calls for parents, doctors, government officials and the nation as a whole to cooperate.
Childhood Obesity: Ask Not Who’s to Blame, But Ask What You Can Do About It
Studies indicate that “childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years”. F\In addition to this, “the prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008”. Furthermore, “the prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%”.
Indeed, the numbers are increasing and will be increasing more and more each year if nothing is done to resolve the issue of childhood obesity. Who is to blame for all these? Should parents be blamed for overfeeding? Should teachers’ school administrators be at fault for allowing the selling of unhealthy foods in middle school vending machines?