Fat Kids

SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2010

The term "fat kids" is not PC, but you know what and who I am talking about. The current band wagon is to cure childhood obesity and childhood diabetes via the school lunchroom. Might was well - we are charged with checking for head lice, checking vision, spinal chords, hearing, oral care, inoculations, etc. We don't check for tone deafness or flat feet - yet. (We do an exceptional job of screening for psycho-motor giftedness, however, thus leading to outstanding athletic programs.) Now, we might as well count calories and serving size for kids.

But that just does not make any sense to me at all. Kids get fat for the same reasons adults get fat: they eat too much and burn off too little. So, what can schools do about it? Let's check the math: 365 days a year, 3 meals a day for most equals 1095 meals per year, not counting snacks, sodas and birthday parties. The school year is 180 days long, so for the 10% with perfect attendance that means they could eat 2 meals per day at school or 360 of their 1095 meals at school. That's about 33% of their intake. So, if 30% of the kids are fat kids, and they eat 33% of their meals at school, will counting tater tots help? I don't think so. My concern is that 70% of the kids are not fat. More than that, the most active time in the day for kids is school time. So we are starving 100% of our kids for 100% of the time they are at school so that we can impact 30% of our kids' intake of 33% of their meals. Sounds like child abuse to me.

Let's try all this in reverse. If we believe schools can make fat kids become skinny kids with the math above, we should be able to make skinny kids become fat kids by feeding them whatever they want. Let's pick skinny 3rd graders, 6th graders and 9th graders (in other words, kids who cannot drive themselves to the golden arches any time they have a pang) and offer these kids whatever they want for breakfast and lunch. Dollars to donuts we can't make those skinny kids become fat kids. They will burn it off.

We should serve healthy food, but it should be good food and there should be plenty of it. Hungry kids don't learn nearly as well as well-fed kids. It has got to be up to parents and guardians to get their kids to burn some calories. We didn't make 'em fat kids and we can't make 'em skinny kids.