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Why do American children grades K-12 have mandatory gym class everyday but
Why do American children grades K-12 have mandatory gym class everyday but have little, if at all, education on how and why to eat healthy?
Diet leads more to weight loss than food alone. After 4 months of being vegan I easily shed 40 lbs with minimal exercise. I went from being obese (30 BMI) to being normal (23 BMI). Don't get me wrong, exercising more would still help me, but I now weigh less (at 23) than I did in middle
and high school, when I was a compeitive athlete (training for hours, multiple times a week, while still being overweight). I had a prediabetic A1C then (my blood tests are all great now).
Most of the leading causes of death are both preventable and reversable through diet. Many people are ignorant. They say "Well, I'll just eat my bacon" or whatever because they don't see the link between that bacon and their father's triple bypass or their mother's breast cancer. They don't see the link between their sugar laden cereal and their hunger before lunch or the MSG in their pizza and their attention issues.
Why spend so much effort on gym class and not on even one nutrition class a week or even in a year? I learned nothing about nutrition from school. I had one home ec class and they taught us to make a sugar laden "dirt" cake, made from oreos and gummi worms. I now find that insane. I liked it then because I didn't know any better. Is there some conspiracy for kids to end up fat and sick or what? Food chemicals affect the human body in many different ways. It's a lot more than just portion control. Even skinny people get sick, so it's more than just about looks, too.
Education is truly power. It takes time, but it is worth it. Public education is the reason smoking rates have gone down so far over the years. I still remember the DARE class I did in middle school and the hole through that smoker's neck, where her breathing tube went in.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Nutrition?
THat is a very good question and the average person is not going to have any answers or reasoning to give you. The only people who may be able to give you an answer is personnel in the school district or higher up like the cabinet level of US government.
Here is a link to their site:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
I know that funding is something that will be the pat answer given, that there aren't enough funds to teach nutrition. But funding wasn't the issue when I was a kid and nutrition was never something important enough to teach in schools. although the school nurse came in one day to kindergarten and showed us how to brush our teeth properly and that was about it. In fact, once I had kids in school, I discovered many were cutting out health classes which covered a tiny bit of many things, like sex ed too and these days, most schools no longer teach that either. So we get young people writing in asking questions that let me know they have not got a single clue about their own anatomy or that of opposite sex and how our sex organs work, how one becomes pregnant, etc. It would be nice but unless enough parents get together to protest this and ask for food/nutrition education
programs and give the education dept ideas on how this can be made possible without funding, they will not do anything. It most likely will entail having an after school program where the person teaching is a volunteer who is a retired nutritionist or dietician, or heck even a retired naturopath Dr. Or if the curriculum for it was something strict to follow, any student of college for natural health or nutritionist may be able to gain extra credits for volunteering time. To volunteer teaching such a class, these people would still have to undergo screening to be sure they are not sex offenders and it would need to be voluntary to parcipate with parents informed of the class and signing up their kids for it. That way it doesn't cost the government any money. Where theres a will, there's a way. Unfortunately it takes a person or several people constantly petitioning the government and at local schools to get such a thing going. The moment any parent who is advocating for this stops and drops the ball, nothing will happen. It can become a part time to full time unpaid job simply to hassle with government for years until change comes. And most people can't afford to put that kind of time into it so nothing ever changes. I'd like to see Health Ed come back, even if it had to be an after school volunteer program.
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