If your child came home with a report card filled out with an F, two Ds, two Cs and bunch of incompletes, you along with most parents would be at the least concerned if not irate.
The aforementioned grades were a result of a long term study of national statistics conducted by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. The grades they determined were as follows:
Overall Physical activity, D-. They discovered a large majority if American youths don't even get an hour of physical activity a week, combined. Of the approximately 112 hours a week when they aren't asleep, American kids get all their exercise in less than 60 minutes. The facts can be correlated to show that the less active young people are, the weaker their hearts and lungs are, the most critical organs that can lead to a healthy, happy, long life.
Sedentary Behaviors, D. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that kids spend no more than two hours a day in front of a screen of some kind. Kids are similar to airplanes and boats. Boats that stay in harbor too long will have difficult sailing and planes that stay on the ground too long will develop structural problems. People who sit still too long will develop heath issues over time. It appears the average American youth spends quadruple the time behind a TV/computer/phone screen than what is healthy.
Active Transportation, F. As I am in my early 60s, I remember back in the time where school buses didn't pick you up if you lived in town. I sued to walk, run, or bike, two miles to school and it was no big deal. In the summers, my friends and I wore out bike tires riding all over town, and we were rarely transported anywhere other than church or out of town. As society has become more dangerous compared to the 1960s, folks generally are skittish about their children being out of sight and for good reason. The end result has been weaker children, however.
Organized Sport Participation, C. Statistics bear out that about half of our kids are involved in some kind of sport or another. That also means that about half of our kids aren't doing anything physical in that respect. Those that do sports get more than half of their beneficial exercise through this venue.
School P.E. Programs, C. With the greater and greater emphasis on better academics in schools, P.E. programs have often been an afterthought. The general thought has been, "what do they need to do to get enough credits to graduate." Having been a P.E. teacher, not very often are those classes set up with the goal of actually improving a student's health. By the time a student is a senior in school, only 38 percent are even taking a PE class.
Community Environment, B. The card was not all bad with a larger number of communities and towns building parks and playgrounds for use by the public. Our neighbors to the south and west, Bentonville and Rogers, have extensive biking and running trails with playgrounds scattered throughout their cities. For our size, Pea Ridge has a big park for kids to go and have fun through physical play.
There were several other areas the research panel studies but couldn't get enough data to make any kind of accurate evaluation, such as family emphasis on fitness, active play and peer group effects on health.
An unmentioned factor in kids health in this report, at least to my way of thinking, was kids nutrition, or lack of same. It does matter what people eat relating to health. For the first time in history, life expectancies are expected to start shrinking, partly due to the lack of exercise on our part and, I believe, to an equal degree to what we eat in our diets.
Since the 1970s, Americans have seen the use of sugar skyrocket in the things they eat on a day to day basis. Less and less fresh food, and more and more packaged, processed and generally lifeless foods have come to define the American three squares a day. Those foods contain less and less minerals and vitamins, and more and more preservatives and chemical additives.
We often hear about how our ancestors lived, well into their 80s or 90s. This was in a time with little medicine, poor insulation and very little in the way of modern conveniences. They did have farm fresh food, clean water, with very little tainted food to have to deal with, so in an important way, they had an advantage over us.
If Americans are to turn around this growing menace to the health and happiness of our families, more time and thought needs to put into what we eat, how much we exercise, and how much time we spend on frivolous things.
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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Editorial on 08/19/2015