Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

[Alexa]

Hey everyone,

I was interested to read the thread about the new bill proposed for stopping people over a certain weight eating in restaurants in Missippi. I think most of us think this is a crazy idea, but I thought it would be interesting to hear what you guys think should (if anything) be done by legislators, community leaders, family etc to encourage people to be healthier and address the obesity 'crisis' as it is often called.

In the UK we've had a whole load of 'celebrities' or media-types for who've got involved in encouraging healthy eating. Jamie Oliver went around showing how schools could have healthier school lunches and there are lots of shows where large people get told they are killing themselves with burgers, cakes, etc.

I quite like the Jamie Oliver thing because it seemed to make sense, but sometimes the shows where fat people get yelled at and made to feel bad seem a bit extreme or exploitative.

So would can be done? What would have encouraged you (if anything) to think about being healthier?

What do you think about: subsidised gyms? School fitness education? Advertising? The price of fresh food? The low fat dogma?

Or is it ONLY a personal issue? I tend to thing not because it seems so much more of a problem now than before. There have to be underlying causes. However I think the individual decision to act is a random personal one a lot of the time.

[*Emma*]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

I think subsidised gyms would be a fantastic idea, bring it on! If i'm honest the only thing that stops me going to the gym is the money, I just cant justify spending that amount of money, cos lets face it, the prices are ridiculous - at least my locals ones are..

More physical education at school for sure - at least every other day if not every day, One hour a week is just not enough, and thats all i did it for at school, and when i didnt select it as a GCSE subject, i didnt even do that one hour!
Music is my first love and P.Ed was in the same category as Music, therefore, i was not allowed to do both, ridiculous eh? P.Ed should be classed the same as the other compulsory subjects, Maths, English & Science.

The low fat crap really drives me crazy at the moment, those dumb online quizzes that my friends keep inviting me to do on facebook ask you of your eating habits, I select "High Fat" so guess what? I'm gonna die when i'm like 40 or something ridiculous. I know its just a stupid quiz but still, i'm fitter than the majority of my friends & my doctor says I've never been healthier.

[hrgillespie]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

I'm with you on the gym prices and the one place I actually could afford didn't offer child care so I was not able to go there ....... I think if they made it affordable or FREE and offered child care as well tons of people would step up.

Food costs is another one ....... whether anyone wants to admit it or not healthy food is expensive ........ it is easy and cheap to grab hotdogs and mac and cheese while fresh fruits and veggies are so expensive it's ridiculous!

Celebrity endorsements I think are a joke because it's pretty easy to stick to a food and diet plan when you have someone paid to do your shopping, cook and prepare your meals and a personnal trainer that comes to your home and puts you through the work outs daily ....... Heck I'd be at goal by now if I had all that and the money to pay for it all!

I am ranting I know ......... can anyone detect that money's alittle tight for me right now????? sorry!

[julirama723]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

In the US, the government is helping to perpetuate obesity.

The food pyramid and the recommended low-fat diet are government endorsed and "created". This load of crap is what's gotten us so fat in the first place. And WHY are certain foods stressed or recommended over others? MONEY. There's no godly reason that we need 6-11 servings of carbs a day, except to put money in the wallets of certain people.

"Special" classes are being cut, too, including physical education (AND music, but that's another issue, don't get me started!). In order to make sure that NO CHILD Is LEFT BEHIND, schools are cutting the fat, so to speak. The government doesn't care that children have learning disabilities or mental retardation or behavioral issues--nope, all of these children are expected to be at or above grade level in core subjects (within a certain time frame!), and the only way they think we can do that is to cut the good stuff out of the day. No more music, no more art, no more physical education--and in my opinion, these are the classes that make us well-rounded individuals! So instead of moving an hour a day, programs have been slashed so much that kids are barely moving an hour a WEEK at school.

For a government that has been creating an obese society to punish and humiliate those who have been following its guidlines, it's just extremely hypocritical.

[Alexa]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

Thanks for all the responses people!

So for teachers out there - what is the minimum exercise requirement in schools where you are?

When I left school it was two hours a week. I have to say I hated it! I wish they taught a wider range of physical activities (competitive and non-competitive) so I would have had a better chance of finding something I liked then and so kept at it. School kinda gave a me horror of exercise - which is mad because I love it now! I think parents have a role here too - most people can do a physical activity of some sort well.

Heidi - yes! Fresh food is so expensive. Or it seems it to me.

[julirama723]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

Here in Montana, the K-5 kids get 1 hour per week. 6-8 grade has physical education for 2 semesters total in those 3 years. In high school, you need to take PE for 1 year. Another thing that adds to this is that recess is being cut or shortened in a LOT of schools. When I was a kid, we had over an hour of recess per day--20 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at lunchtime, and 20 minutes in the afternoon. Now, kids barely get 30 minutes daily it seems.

[julirama723]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

Oops I never put what changes I'd like to see!

I'm not sure if a subsidized gym system would work. I know that many of us would LOVE something like that--but I can see a lot of people out there who would just come up with another excuse (now that price would not be an issue) not to go.

I think again it goes back to educating people about healthy choices. Start young, teach children the importance of good nutrition and exercise. I think that the importance of daily movement (like riding your bike or walking instead of driving a car) should be encouraged.

Oooh here's an idea--tax write off for gym fees.

[hrgillespie]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

I am not a teacher but I can tell you what my kids get .......

Caleb is in preschool he gets 30 minutes a day of what they call Large motor skills .......... it might be climbing, running outdoor play or bike riding. The bike riding is 3 trikes shared in a 30 minutes session by 17 kids so you can imagine how much gross motor that works out to be. LOL

Hillary who is in 7th grade has PE 1x a week for 45 minutes. and daily recess is 10 minutes after lunch a day.

Michael who is in 10th grade has allready completed his high school requirements for PE which is 2 semesters or 1 semester and participation in three sports. There is a lot of hall walking but no recess time in High School!

[sadie147]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

I'm not a teacher either, but when i was a kid we had 'gym' twice a week for about an hour in elementary school, in middle school it was the same, then in high school it was elective and not mandatory (so of course i never took it)....

Our city run gyms, which i have been a member in the past only because i can buy a month to month pass and didn't have to sign any contract, cost about twice as much as a private gym. Though gyms here do have regulations regarding their membership plans, they are not allowed to make you sign for more than one year, and you have a two week grace period, where you can back out if you're not happy.

A subsidised gym would be really nice! even with the regulations, i don't trust they're fine print.

In the US, the government is helping to perpetuate obesity.

I will say that one of the most horrific things about the us governement and obesity is High Fructose corn syrup. it's in almost every sweetened product in the US, and it's all because of tarrifs the governement has put on sugar, to make it more expensive to help the corn trade. That's not of course the specifics, but if you research it it's amazing how the government has forced this horrible sweetener on the public. We have it in very few products here (unless they're imported from the US). Not that sugar is any better, but it's far better then HFCS.

From Wikipedia:

Because of a system of price supports and sugar quotas imposed since May 1982, importing sugar into the United States is prohibitively expensive. High-fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, is more economical since the American price of sugar is artificially far higher than the global price of sugar[9] and the price of #2 corn is artificially low due to both government subsidies and dumping on the market as farmers produce more corn annually.[10][11] The food industry turned to HFCS as a substitute, with both Coca-Cola and Pepsi switching to HFCS in 1984.[12]

Other countries, including Mexico and Canada, typically use sugar in soft drinks. Some Americans seek out Mexican Coke in ethnic groceries, because they feel it tastes better or is healthier than Coke made with HFCS. [3]

The average American consumed approximately 28.4 kg of HFCS in 2005, versus 26.7 kg of sucrose sugar.[13] In countries where HFCS is not used or rarely used, the sucrose consumption per person can be higher than the USA; for exa

The possible difference in health effects between sucrose and HFCS could come from the difference in chemical make up between them. HFCS 55 (the type most commonly used in soft drinks) is made up of 55% fructose and 45% glucose. By contrast, sucrose is made up of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Further, the fructose and glucose in HFCS 55 are in the form of separate molecules; by contrast, the fructose and glucose that are contained in sucrose are joined together to form a single molecule (called a disaccharide). This chemical difference may be less significant in many beverages that are sweetened with sucrose. This is because many beverages are strongly acidic, and the acid in the beverage will cause the sucrose to separate into its component parts of glucose and fructose. The amount of sucrose converted will depend on the temperature the beverage is kept at and the amount of time it is kept at this temperature.
There are a number of relevant studies published in peer reviewed journals. Studies on the effect of fructose, as reviewed by Elliot et al.[19], implicate increased consumption of fructose (due primarily to the increased consumption of sugars but also partly due to the slightly higher fructose content of HFCS as compared to sucrose) in obesity and insulin resistance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup

[APanthesilia]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

I remember really hating PE in school but I was in the best shape of my life when I was taking it! There were daily runs and other exercises and I wish I had someone besides me now to make me go out and do it!

The Jamie Oliver thing was very good I think to let you see what exactly mosts kids ARE eating. I remember reading somewhere after that that some schools counted ketchup packets as a vegetable to get in the required number of vegetables! I think encouraging healthy eating habits has to start at a very early age or it won't become something that carries on into adulthood. And it doesn't help just to teach in classes about nutrition because learning something but then going into a cafeteria serving pizza and chips is a seriously mixed message. I know that at my school things like broccoli were served just steamed and completely flavourless so no one would ever pick something like that! I think it is up to schools to make healthy food tasty and more available than the junk food.

That being said, I know it can't be just schools because once the government started enforcing some of the healthy school food options I remember news stories about moms smuggling big macs in for their children during lunch time! Who knows what the answer is? But I think if the government were to do anything about it at all then it would have to be encouraging kids at a young age to become healthy adults.

[APanthesilia]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

Sadie- That is so interesting! Thanks for the post!

[sadie147]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

Sadie- That is so interesting! Thanks for the post!

yes it is isn't it? I'd be willing to bet you rarely see HFCS in Britain, I know i don't here. it' was a post on this board a couple of years ago that brought it to my attention, I'd never heard of it so i did a search on it. Everytime I travel to the US now i keep my eye out for it, and am amazed how many products it's in. I even bought dog treats from walmart here recently that were made in the US and i ended up throwing them out when i realized it was in them. I wouldn't even give that stuff to my dog

[TitianWasp]

Re: Law on restaurants - what does work/do you want to see?

PE 5 days a week used to be the norm for our parents' generation. Then, since there were a total of 3 channels to watch and no video games or children's programming, kids would (shock) go out to play when they came home. If you wanted to buy something, you had to walk or drive to a store to purchase it. If you had time to watch the tv after physically cleaning the house or working a job, you had to get up to change the channel yourself. If you go back a little further, you had one or fewer cars per family, no tv at all, washing machines that you had to crank by hand, and this, perhaps most significantly, virtually no snacks.

Today's food budget consumes the least amount of the average persons' income in history. Food simply used to be more expensive (yes, believe it or not - compared to what people earned) and less available. You either grew a lot of it yourself, or you bought, cut, peeled, canned, stirred and heated it yourself. The rich could afford pastries or the like, but those were even then special treats, and bags of potato chips or boxes of cookies were essentially unheard of. In every aspect, life required more calories, and obtaining those calories was much more difficult/expensive. More moving, and less eating (especially the type of snacky, high carb eating we do now) meant slimmer people.

I don't think we can blame the government for all of these things. Our biology has largely not kept up with our culture. We are designed to hold on to every measly calorie we can, but famine in this country is virtually unheard of and high calorie, palatable food is readily available and extremely inexpensive. Working in the hospital, I'd say 60% of the chronic ailments that I saw were directly caused by lack of moving around (everything from diabetes to depression). Our bodies are designed to function best with a fairly high activity level - not just burning calories, but keeping hormone levels at an even keel, and circulation up (affecting our moods and our immune system).

Other countries with higher fat diets maintain smaller waistlines without the government telling people where they can or cannot eat. Their culture is higher fat, yes, but lower calorie than we, and they move around a lot more, not to mention eat a lot more veggies. A huge plate of steamed spinach with a dollop of fresh butter on top is still less calorie dense than a plate of pasta with non-fat marinara.

I am frustrated too. I go from house to garage, to elevator, to computer desk and then do the same in reverse at the end of the day. I don't eat as many veggies as I should, and I do snack more than I should, but I know that these things are my fault and no one else's. I can only think that as people tend to take the path of least resistance, making gyms less expensive and more ubiquitous would help. Making veggies less expensive particularly for those in the inner cities who very rarely see them could be an improvement. Building communities with sidewalks, clustered around their school, market and theaters so that people are encourged to walk to them could make a difference. When the government sees the direct cost benefit to these measures they might take them, but until someone in power feels a pinch in their own pocket because our populace is getting bigger and less healthy, I am not holding my breath for drastic change in policy. Until then, it's up to us.