WELL - Summer 2000 - Where Do The Children Play?

Summer 2000

Volume II, Issue II

Where Do The Children Play?

by Martin Collis, PhD

Cat Stevens asked this question back in the late 60's and it's more relevant than ever. In fact other questions can be added. When do the children play? Do the children play? In the same era, Crosby, Stills and Nash commanded us to, "teach your children well" and when it comes to physical activity and nutrition we're not.

Can Johnny come out and eat?

"Can Johnny come out and eat?"

Childhood obesity is referred to by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA, as an "epidemic." This is not an organization given to hyperbole, but when they see a 50% increase in obesity in the 10–year period from 1990–1999, the term epidemic seems appropriate. I haven't seen national figures for Canadian school children over this period, but a survey in Edmonton, Alberta shared a similar statistical pattern, with girls' obesity actually increasing 60% in the final 10 years of the twentieth century.

A recent report from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research uses a familiar phrase to describe obesity of 10 year olds in France—"epidemic proportions." "The number of seriously overweight children in France has more than doubled since the 1980's." This is not just a North American problem. We live in a world, where for the first time, the number of overweight people outnumber those who are underweight and starving. However, in this article I will confine my comments to Canada and the USA.

The reasons are very, very easy to document. Our children are relatively inactive and eat too many empty calories. Here are a few factors in the reshaping of North American youth:

The average child will be in school for 11,000 hours by the time they graduate. During this time they will watch 15,000 hours of TV.
The advent of computers, GameBoys, and Sony Play Stations mean thousands more sedentary hours in front of a screen.
In 1989, 15% of US homes had computers, 10 years later that figure is 54%.
Across North America, school physical education has been reduced and in some cases removed.
For reasons of safety, convenience and necessity, an increasing number of children are transported to and from school in cars and buses. (They are powered by hydrocarbons rather than carbohydrates.)
In the past 40 years, the size of many fast food servings has increased 4 fold.
- The one–ounce hamburger patty has become a 1/4 pounder and more.
- The 6 or 8–ounce soft drink has become a 32 ounce Big Gulp.
- The medium popcorn has gone from 3 cups to 16 cups.
Children, on average, spend 40% of their disposable income on "convenience" food and if they eat "Biggie" fries, "Whoppers" and "Supersized" portions, many will become biggie, whopping, supersized kids.
With increasing numbers of single parent families, and families in which both parents work, children are likely to eat packaged foods and fast foods, and likely to indulge in unsupervised TV watching.
The combination of TV and a barrage of advertisements for high calorie snacks is a deadly double whammy.
In the movie Jerry McGuire we learned the catch phrase, "Show me the money!" The food industry in the US spends 33 billion dollars a year on advertising and promotions, with McDonald's alone spending over 1 billion. These sums dwarf the million dollars allotted by the national Cancer institute for its 5–a–day program to promote increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, and similar efforts by the Heart and Lung Institute.

I got a crash course in economics when I ran a soccer camp a few years back. The wholesale cost of juices and milk was high, the acceptable retail mark–up was modest and the sales low. Soft drinks on the other hand cost little, could be marked–up a thousand fold or more and sold in huge quantities. Not only that, but the soft drink companies were keen to sponsor soccer balls, t–shirts and fill the camp with their logo. I declined the sponsorship but sold the pop, which at the time seemed reasonable, as the players in the camp were active for 6 hours a day. However, school concessions face the same dilemma. Sell healthy drinks at low profits and lose customers, or bow to the friendly persuasion of the soft drink giants.

In the American Journal of Health Promotion, Lyle et al. documented eating behaviors of students in grades 3, 5 and 8. Herewith a few of the findings.

	GRADE
	3^rd	5^th	8^th
Ate breakfast	98.6	94.4	85.2%
Ate fruit	64.6	55.9	37.1%
Ate vegetables	56.1	49.5	41.6%
Drank fruit juice	44.0	47.4	32.0%
Drank soft drinks	21.4	30.8	57.1%

The patterns are obvious—there is a gradual decline in eating breakfast and a marked decline in the consumption of fruits, vegetables and juices, and there is a big jump in the intake of soft drinks, which more than doubled between grades 3 and 8. Little exercise and lots of soft drinks can lead to soft kids.

Run Johnny Run
by Martin Collis

Run Johnny Run
Run Johnny Run
Run Johnny Run

I'll sing you the song about Johnny Spain, I'll start when he's 6 years old.
His daddy worked in a pulp mill, that's what I've been told.
His mummy she worked in a baker's shop, she was a waitress on the sly,
And Johnny did the best he could with the things their cash could buy.
Run Johnny run? Your life has just begun.

One bright September morning Johnny started out to school.
He wasn't good at reading and some kids called him a fool.
But once a week for a special treat the kids went to the gym,
And Johnny knew without being told it was the place for him.
Run Johnny run? Now you'll have some fun.

He should have had fun every week but it didn't work out that way.
They closed the gym for 20 days rehearsing for a play.
They used it for the school bazaar and to let the people vote,
And it seemed to him the beautiful gym was getting ever more remote.
Run Johnny run? You gotta chase your fun.

His mum and dad weren't home that much so Johnny had a key.
He learned to open the fridge and the house and to turn on the TV.
He got junk food for his body he had TV on his mind,
And the tiny figures on the TV screen were the best friends he could find.
Run Johnny run? You're a son of a gun.

Along with MTV and Simpsons Johnny watched a lot of sports,
And every day a different play would occupy his thoughts.
But basketball above them all set his eyes and mind agleam.
So he walked down to the gas station and signed up for a team.
Run Johnny run? You can run and gun.

He bought himself some Converse shoes and his very own basketball.
They held a lot of practices but Johnny made them all.
But when it came to making cuts and 6 kids had to go,
The first of them was Johnny Spain who was short and fat and slow.
Run Johnny run? You're not the chosen one.

Aboard the education train he got to junior high.
But he was a different Johnny Spain—he was growing up kind of sly.
He wouldn't do cross–country, he had problems with his knees,
And every week old Johnny the freak would develop a new disease.
Run Johnny run? Your downward slide's begun.

Just look in any beer–hall and it's full of Johnny Spains,
They're bored with life at 25 and an awful lot remains.
But I look at them quite guiltily for I know without a doubt,
There's a jock inside each Johnny Spain that never could get out.
Run Johnny run? Run for your life.

CONVENIENCE

In previous issues of WELL, I noted that a wellness lifestyle is not always a "convenient" lifestyle. One perspective is that the health of many of our children is being sacrificed on the altar of convenience.

Daily physical education is not convenient in schools. You need special facilities, equipment, showers, organization, well–trained teachers and safety precautions. It is much more convenient for administrators to decrease or eliminate physical education. The rationale is often that parents are asking for more academic content, but this doesn't bare close scrutiny. I would challenge any educator to show me statistics that when a school goes to quality daily physical education that academic scores go down, in fact the reverse is usually true, academic performance goes up.
Cars and buses are a convenient way to get children to school. There are concerns about bicycle maintenance or storage—the children are "safe" in their glass, metal and plastic containers and everybody can have a few extra few minutes in bed. But the convenience deprives them of much needed movement and exercise. In response to safety concerns, there is a growing movement called "The Walking School Bus" in which parents chaperone groups of children on their walk to school.

Convenience stores sell convenience foods that are typically high in sugar, fat and salt. I once wrote a verse about Pringles potato chips:

"When god created potatoes
And donated them to man
It wasn't to be crushed and fried
And served in a tennis ball can."

Typically, packaged cookies and baked goods use the cheapest and most damaging hydrogenated fats. Fruit "drinks" are loaded with sugar. In one meal at a fast food franchise, in addition to getting lots of bad fat, sugar and salt, a child (or an adult) can consume their complete daily requirement of calories.

TV is the ultimate convenience device. If the kids are acting up, click on the cartoons. Instead of a bedtime story, pop in a Disney video. Unsupervised TV watching leaves children exposed to daily doses of murder, mayhem, sex and slick commercials.

A recent piece of research noted that children who watch 1 hour or less TV per day have a 3% chance of becoming obese. Children that watch 3 hours or more per day have a 25% chance of becoming obese.

Ritalin is a convenient way to "treat" a "hyperactive" child, and there is little doubt that it is over prescribed. The Physician's Desk Reference specifically states that Ritalin "should not be used in children under 6 years of age," but in 1993 US physicians wrote 200,000 prescriptions for Ritalin and similar stimulants for children 5 years old and younger. (Ritalin is a stimulant which has the paradoxical effect of tranquilizing highly active children). In 1995 more than 6 million psychiatric prescriptions were written for American school aged children. (This information comes from the challenging and well–researched book by John Robbins, "Reclaiming Our Health.") Ritalin is convenient for parents, doctors, teachers and administrators but psychiatrists Barkley and Cunningham, after analyzing 17 studies, noted that Ritalin "does not enhance learning."

The message is beginning to get through. In the story of the Pied Piper, the parents panicked when the Piper came for the children. Today, the Pied Piper of convenience and commerce is playing a tune that is leaving our children overweight and under exercised. There are numerous references to this in the professional literature and I don't think we need too many more studies to convince us that children are fatter than is good for their physical, social and psychological health.

The message is now being taken up in the North American press and in the past two months there have been feature articles about overweight children and school physical education in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Sports Illustrated and Macleans to name just a few. After completing this article, I read the July 3^rd issue of Newsweek which deals with the same problem in a feature entitled "Generation XXL."

SOLUTIONS

We live in a culture where children and adults are bombarded with messages to consume affordable, available, high calorie fast food. At the same time fewer and fewer calories are needed in the activities of daily living. It is a toxic culture for obesity.

Things will not change with low level tinkering or by individuals swimming against the cultural tide. The only way we will get measurable improvement is to gradually change the culture. This is a tall order involving politics, economics, human rights, mass media, the health care system and education.

Here are some things that could begin to make a difference:

Quality daily physical education in schools.
Consistent messages from physicians and other health care professionals on the benefits of exercise and good nutrition.
Good modeling by parents, teachers, doctors and other professionals. What you do shouts so loud that children won't hear what you say.
Taxation of fast–food and soft drinks to pay for a well funded national campaign for good nutrition.
Removal of food advertisements from children's television programs.
Turn off the TV.
Create bike paths and safe walking paths so that children can commute to school under their own power.

Every parent wants what's best for their children and "best" for almost everybody is to be physically active, well–fed and not restricted by obesity or, of course, a pathological need to be thin.

Contact Information

Phone: (250) 721-6997
Fax: (250) 721-6929
Email: mcollis@speakwell.com

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