For the past couple dozen years or so, I have read many articles lamenting the fact that in the not too distant future, the younger generation may be the first since America came into being that life expectancy may be lessening. Well, it seems, the future is now.
Though many conditions or situations have come together to bring about this situation, the final result is that students in school today will not live as long as their parents and grandparents. This not just one mans' or one institutions' prediction, but it is now a commonly accepted, thoroughly researched assumption reached by just about every association of people who study and report on such things.
The National Institute of Health, as well as other entities, has predicted that 30 million of our nation's children will grow up and die of heart disease at much younger ages than the generations before them. With 10 grandchildren of my own, that kind of future is one that concerns me in no small measure.
Besides the length of life, the quality of life will also be impacted in very negative ways. Weakness and overweight problems have great negative effects on a person's mental health, bone density and muscle quality. Recent studies also bear out the fact that unfit children learn and retain less that do others at the same level of ability.
Studies have been done that demonstrated that children who reach a state of fitness have better perception, memory and cognitive control than do children of poorer health. Children who are fit have longer attention spans, recall previous learning far better and are generally better behaved.
The fact is that today's children have an obesity problem, with national data indicating that 33 percent of all American youth are obese with over half of our children suffering from being overweight. Along with the weight problem, national research indicates that the average child is also weaker than children of previous generations. Even scarier, there are more and more children who appear to be normal on the outside, but who have developed fat deposits inside their bodies, some around their heart tissue which will impair the health of the most important organ in their bodies.
Children today are less active and spend far more time indoors than did their predecessors, and the food they often eat is not helping the problem. Lots of experts generally agree on how we came to this state of affairs, but what to do about it is something that very little is agreed upon.
Due to the federal Affordable Care Act, health care has become more expensive and most experts agree that it will also become harder to come by in the future. Going into this future, the coming generation will likely be faced with a much greater need for health care at the same time it is becoming more scarce. Something has to be done, but it will be up to the families and individuals of our country to do something that might prevent the worst from happening.
The only thing that can turn the tide of this poor health tsunami is diligence. Taking pills won't save the day, nor will any kind of quick fix. This morass of poor health is a result of a lot of poor decisions over a very long time.
According to the National Fitness Council, to reach a state of fitness requires that children exercise three days a week with each session having at least 30 minutes to an hour of physical exertion. Any activity that doesn't require much if any exertion really won't affect health to a positive degree.
Children who exercise frequently will, of course, need a healthy diet to replace the minerals and vitamins that the body uses to power itself. Soda pop, junk food, sugar spiked foods, or foods laced with chemicals will not serve to build up the body.
Thirty years ago, the nation got on a reduced fat kick, and processed foods were everywhere touting their "low fat" to "no fat" qualities. Fat tastes good, and low fat foods were terribly unappetizing. The cure for the corporate bottom line is to put more and more sugar in foods to make them taste better. This change in the nation's dietary habits was the beginning of the obesity epidemic. As it turns out, ingested fat doesn't turn to fat and the stampede to include more sugar in our diet didn't need to happen.
There is a way to "inoculate" your children to keep them from suffering from the things that might be. Feeding your children a diet that includes a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, drinking lots of water and involving your children in some kind of strenuous activity that raises their heart rate and strengthens their lungs will go a long way from preventing your child from being a future statistic.
Some might complain that doing the aforementioned would be "too much trouble." Personally, I don't anything that could be a critical benefit to people I love would ever be too much trouble.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Editorial on 06/25/2014