The province of B-C is the latest Canadian provincial government to legislate a Junk Food Ban. Prompted by the scary stat that one in four kids in B-C is either overweight or obese, my friends kids on the West Coast will no longer be able to get their hands on junk food while in school. The ban includes kindergarten through Grade 12….B-C kids will also be expected to complete 30 minutes of physical activity a day or the equivalent of 150 minutes of exercise a week!! Other legislated junk food bans include Ontario and Quebec.
In Britain, the new National Child Measurement Program (their government’s drive to solve childhood obesity), will take the height and weight of kids in their first year of school. They’ll do the same thing five years later. Parents who agree to have their children weighed and measured, will receive “size report cards” in the mail.
So what about us Albertans? According to a recent article in Avenue Magazine (September Issue), “different school boards have different nutrition policies that individual schools interpret as they see fit”. In other words, it’s up to each individual school to make the appropriate changes.
There’s no denying it….Stats Canada says just over one quarter of kids and adolescents TODAY, are overweight or obese compared to fifteen percent back in the late 70’s. While we can blame part of obesity on poor nutrition, we also have to look at the lifestyles of our kids. Kids today, aren’t moving as much as we used to when we were young! I think back to the late 70’s, once our homework was done, we were out playing until the sun set. Kids today are more apt to sit in front of a computer, playing video games and watching TV.
Maybe we have something to learn from our friends to the west. B-C’s ban of junk food, combined with its daily exercise program will give that province the most aggressive health program in the country!
I really hope Alberta follows the example of B-C, Ontario and Quebec. Healthier kids today, will make way for a generation with lower rates of heart disease and diabetes and longer life expectancy! An A-Plus to our B-C friends....after all, a healthy body promotes a healthy mind!
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5 years ago
1 comment:
Thomas Carl Reyes wrote
at 12:34pm
It would seem that this age of affluence and technology-dependent entertainment has put our lifestyles in a vegetative state. We've sowed the seeds of encapsulated self-sufficiency and now we're harvesting the results:
myopic cacooning. Our horizons have been reduced to the LCD screen in front of us. For this is our world. We're losing our sense of community. We've become physically limited in the real world and have committed ourselves wholeheartedly to online pursuits. To supplement this, junk food has become our staple. It fills us. It calms us. It comforts us. This is what we're passing on to our children who practice what we do. Banning junk food at schools is a start, but it is just a temporary remedy for symptoms that arise from deeper within. We're sick and living in denial offers no real solutions. We have to get at the root of the problem before it's too late!
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