Yesterday while making a salad for the meal to take over to my daughter's home where a beehive of activity is taking place to build a deck, I had a flashback to my childhood. The after school snack. A chunk of cabbage. Crisp, crunchy and sweet, and probably from Mom's garden. I'm sure kids would turn up their noses at vegetable snacks today, but that's what we got. Desserts were for meal time, and that might be something I call "warm milk cake" because I don't think it had a name, and it certainly didn't have icing.
For years women's magazines have been sounding the alarm on the obesity problem--a lot of good that has done. Personally, I think the current feminist movement which started the back to the workplace shift for women in the 1970s, which grew an entire casual eating out restaurant industry-- take-out, pizza, and fast food empire--because women weren't home at 5 or 6 p.m. to cook, is the source of many of the problems we have in 2010 with over weight children, who then become over weight adults.
There are medical problems--some genetic--that can cause obesity, such has metabolic syndrome, but even these can be controlled or helped with a simple plan of ELMM. Eat less move more. It's darn hard work, but not a penny from the government pork and gravy train is needed. Here's a common sense tip from a government program called Letsmove dot gov:
- •Keep fruits and vegetables within reach; store cookies, chips and ice cream out of immediate sight.
•Schedule specific family activities at regular times. Instead of saying "we need to be more active," plan a 30-minute neighborhood walk after dinner three evenings a week.
•When shopping, park the car as far from the store as possible. Make it a game: Count the steps as you walk to the store -- and next time, try to park even farther away.
But where's the money in common sense?
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5 comments:
If you follow the money and ownership I'm guessing the same companies that push the diet plans also own the snack food companies. Sort of like Planned Parenthood passing out defective condoms so they can stay in business.
I think there have been huge ramifications in home life because women are out working. I am also betting that taking Home Ec out of the schools, dying 4-H clubs and other clubs that encouraged the art of having a happy, nutritious home meal might have been added to the mix.
Lean pork is supposedly not a bad source of low-fat protein. Why do they call it pork? They should call it government pasta! That's where the calories are!
Back in the days when the poor needed calories, fat back pork was a real prize, a lure. The fact that it is the new white meat doesn't change its story.
Maybe not, but I like to look at what things are called from a different angle. Blame the poet in me, but I love to think about words and images and I still think that pork image is kind of a cliche. (:
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