The subject of childhood obesity is a news item that rears its ugly head often on the local/national news. Whenever the subject comes up in Social Problems, I tend to gloss over it because despite the strong opinions on it or rather the opinions that people tend to adopt from the media, the reason behind the "epidemic" is quite simple. Yes, we as a society eat too much greasy food, but we used to cook food with LARD people! So, our diets are not soley to blame. In a post-industrial society, where sitting at computers all day, watching tv, and playing WII is the culture, we should expect that children be a little chubby. And we need to distinguish the kids that are genetically fat and those that aren't. Science has acknowledged a fat gene that predisposes some of us to be on the thick side. I am one of them. I must've run 10,000K up and down my block as a kid, but alas I was and still am a chubby thing. I worry about my son, the classic post-modern kid, who would rather stay inside and watch Ben-10 and enjoy the air-conditioning. Because he's an endomorph , I have to watch how he eats and make sure he gets exercise. Since we don't have child labor anymore to keep our kids slim and trim we have to be viligant about their activity level and for God's sake stop blaming it on McDonald's! And here is the rest of it.
