And it makes me realize how stupid and ass backwards we as Americans teach our children.
Every bad habit is either taught in school or learned at home. The worse part is the school system spends more time with our children, and they aren’t even teaching them the basics.
Sad state of affairs.
I have friends whose 9 and 5 year olds don’t want to eat home-made food (my friend is actually really good cook). All they want to eat is chicken nuggets and similar crap they feed them at school. This is a battle that has to be fought on many fronts: at home, at school, in the restaurants and supermarkets.
I grew up in a home with mostly home cooked meals. I have twin boys, almost 4YO, and they will grow up knowing how to cook.
My wife on the other hand…to her cooking food is warming up something bought out of the freezer section at the grocery store. Ok though…I like to cook so I dont mind her not knowing, and Im teaching her…
My mother cooked meals for us when I was little before she went to work, I didn’t eat it of course, I was a candy eater and ate shit loads of the stuff.
Big shocker… I was skinny and healthy, amazing what running around for 6 hours a day will do for your health. And I’m diabetes free :P, today I still enjoy sweets but settle for fruit instead.
It’s not the foods that kids eat, it’s the level of activity and the parent’s thinking ever pedo wants to kidnap their kids so they sit them in front of the tv, instead of having them burn off those calories.
Don’t get me wrong, diet is important but lack of exercise is what makes you fat.
I haven’t seen the show yet, but I live in Huntington, where it was filmed. I don’t know how it compares to the rest of the country, but most of the kids here are beyond lazy. And the parents of course are to blame, because they aren’t any better. Some people are upset about the show being filmed here because they think it makes us look bad. I couldn’t care less, because they filmed the truth. Hopefully it wakes some of these people up.
The biggest problem is lack of money- cheap food is garbage, which is what they buy.
The school basically screwed him in the chicken vs pizza shootout. Whats next candy vs broccoli? Those lunch ladies do not want it to workout, if it did they would actually have to cook(work).
I’ve smelled a rat for a long time when it comes to the United States and our food supply. The federal government provides massive subsidies (tax dollars) to producers of corn, grain and sugar (among many other agricultural payoffs) and the majority of that money doesn’t end up in the pockets of some poster-child American farmer sitting atop his grandfather’s John Deere with a couple of tow-headed little boys in their OshKosh B’Gosh coveralls. The lion’s share of federal farm subsidies ends up in the corporate coffers of the likes of ADM and Con-Agra.
I caught a bit of Oliver’s show last night and saw the dismayed look on his face when the food services director for the school district sat him down and laid out about ten binders from the USDA which stipulated (down to the gram) what had to go into the meals for the school kids. And who do you think lobbies Congress (with the money we give them, no less) and, by extension, the USDA, to make sure those meals are chock full of the products they grow?
So where’s the health care industry? Why aren’t they raising Cain about the crap food the government subsidizes and mandates we eat–food that is literally poisoning us and our kids? With the exception of a few voices crying in the the wilderness, the health care industry in this country knows the money is in treating sick people, not preventing illness in the first place.
Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) published a thought provoking op-ed piece in the New York Times last year suggesting the only way the consumer was ever going to win was if the corporate titans were eventually forced to battle one another, rather than acting in collusion. When health insurance companies are forced to cover everyone and are restricted from endlessly escalating their premiums to cover expenses, they are going to start pushing for better preventative care to reduce their long-term liabilities. According to Pollan, this may lead to a “battle royale” between food industry/agricultural lobbyists and their counterparts from the insurance industry.
Watch our elected officials squirm if they are forced to pass up campaign contributions from either of these two huge contributers in order to curry favor from the other.
Agribusiness provide food to feed millions in the US and millions more outside the USA. This is not a conspiracy, the producers of corn do not force people to make it into Fritos and have them for breakfast.
Why is there always so much hate on this forum for businesses that create products and sell them? That is the basis of our economy.
M_P
i live close to charleston and i remember all the hell that was raised in huntington over the show…everyone has a choice to make at the store, whether it’s walmart, kroger, or whatever grocery store you go to…look at the parents of these children, career welfare recipients, 20 somethings with 2 kids living at home with their parents, and the list goes on…you are responsible for your own actions, end of story…
not all parents are dipshits, but from what i see in my activity with the community, those in that under 30 crowd are some of the reasons to “eat their young” or would have been poster children for birth control…everyone wants to blame someone or something rather than taking responsibility for their choices in life…
just like people bitching about not having this, that or the other…nearly EVERYONE has the ability to go to school and learn…nearly EVERYONE has the ability to join the military or get some sort of education to be successful at gaining employment…you choose your career path, no one else chooses it for you…
my kids both eat home cooked meals that my wife or i prepare after working that will normally include fish/chicken/deer/beef, vegetables, potatoes or rice, and bread…they are quite active and not hooked to the tv/video game box…
i haven’t watched the show, all i did was read about it months ago when it was filmed…all the fatasses in huntington were all bent out of shape about being classified as the most obese city in the nation or whatever…so i don’t expect a good outcome out of the show anyway…
Because it’s welfare, my grandfather grew up on a farm, he had no love for farmers who got subsidies, how is it any different than bailing out banks?
Farmers have been getting bailed out for decades, and as far as choice to use high fructose in replace of sugar cane comes down to economics, how can a sugar cane farmer compete with corn prices when the government pays the corn farmer for his loss so he can sell his corn below market prices?
And who cares about feeding the world, why do we need to feed NK? Or Ghana? Stand on your own two feet or fall on your ass.
subsidies greatly distort the supply and demand of the food market. We have so much corn we actually had to find new applications for it for the hell of it. Thats where we get ethanol and high fructose corn syrup from. These two things are only possible because of corn subsidies.
New Zealand eliminated its subsidies, and their farming output quadrupled after it. Unlike here where we are paying subsidies to farmers that make more than the average American family. Why are we subsidizing them. Theres more Dept of Ag workers than actual farmers
Check out Food, Inc and King Corn. Both are available instantly from Netflix.
Just wanted to throw in that the show is available on Hulu
http://www.hulu.com/jamie-olivers-food-revolution
I first noticed him after i caught a blurb on some blogs i follow that he won the TED Prize for 2010. http://www.tedprize.org/jamie-oliver/
So i went and look at his website and while his beliefs might not be perfectly in line with what i am pursuing for nutritional goals, him pushing real food over processed food is the major hurdle that must be overcome first.
I’m all for free market competition, that’s not at all what I am saying. I am not concerned with ADM or other large companies making food, but I agree that the government shouldn’t distort the market either.
B_C
We’re going on 50+ years now of TV dinners, fast food, and so forth. That’s at least 3 generations where in many family’s, nobody knows how to actually prepare a meal. I can’t really find fault except in the most foolish circumstances… people go with what they are taught or grow up with, and often its a matter of what people can afford, or have time for, but its a sad state of affairs.
I hate government control and micromanagement as much as the next guy, but trying to blame the government or farmers or the ag industry for the pile of fat asses this country has become is silly. The reason we are fat asses is because we refuse to accept responsibility for our actions. PERIOD. Last I checked our grocery stores are stocked full of good, nutritious foods that can be prepared into wonderful meals. We just choose to leave them there and go to the pre cooked isles on a consistent basis. Heck if you do the math you will find that buying raw materials and preparing a meal yourself is often cheaper than buying pre cooked stuff. We are just too lazy to do the work.
Same thing goes for the kids. Were just too lazy to do the work and accept responsibility for our offspring. Nothing says that your kids must eat the cafeteria food, which EVERYONE knows sucks. Get your fat ass up 10 minutes early and make your kid a healthy lunch. Not effing rocket science, just takes some personal responsibility, a thing rarer than a prom night virgin these days. Same effers that cant for the life of them be bothered to take their damned offspring to school, but want me to pay extra taxes for a shuttle service. See them every day, standing out by the school bus stop in their PJ’s sucking on a cancer stick… yeah they are really going to be late for Oprah or whatever if they took 5 minutes and walked their kids down the street to school.
You can blame .gov for making unhealthy foods much cheaper than healthier foods. And you can blame .gov for putting small farmers out of business in favor of the large corporate farms.
I was trying to remember what food we were served in school, was quite a while ago but as much as I can remember we got the same crap they get now. I remember cardboard pizza and fries, hot dogs and tater tots, soup that came from a can.
But we also had recess and gym, after school we would drop off our books do some chores and be outside until dark playing. There was nothing good to watch on tv, we had atari but were not allowed to play much because we only had 1 tv, no computers. The only times I really watched tv was if it was raining and saturday mornings, we didnt have 24 hour cartoon channels.
The only exercise some kids get is walking from the bus stop to their house, they also have a tv, video games, computer in their rooms. Seems thats a bigger problem now since I grew up eating the same crap.
Not sure about your AO, but around here fast food and pre-processed foods aside from maybe Ramen noodles and potted meats are not cheaper than raw materials. I can go I to any grocery store and buy fresh veggies, meat… at a cheaper price than the alternatives. That includes going out to eat. You don’t have to go to Whole Foods or some other exotic high mark up grocery stores to get good fresh ingredients for a healthy meal. We all choose to go the other route because of time and lazyness. We just don’t want to stand in the kitchen making dinner after an 8+ hour work day. We just want to come home and spend some quality time with the family and appearently being in the kitchen cooking and talking isn’t as good a quality as sitting in front of the TV or XBOX. I am just as guilty of this as the rest of the fat asses in the country.
I don’t k ow enough about the farming industry to know why small farmers went bu the way side so you may be correct there. All I know is that be it small farmers or ag business, the food is there,readily available, and very cost effective we just choose to
walk on by.
As far as exercise goes, I agree 100%. We all sit around to much playing video games instead of real games. Parents are too lazy to go out and watch their kids play, even though almost every neighborhood has some sort of park near by. I wouldn’t let my kid roam the neighborhood unsupervised, but I take him to the park and let him go nuts and vent some energy.
Basically we are just lazy bastards as a whole.
Do you factor in the time it takes you to shop, prep and cook the meal with the cost of purchasing the food? A Mcdonald’s cheeseburger is usually far cheaper at $1 than going to a store buying ground beef, patties, cheese, and returning home and cooking it. It probably will take you 20-30 minutes to cook with prep time, and 20 - 30 minutes to shop for the food.
McDonald’s drive through should be 5 minutes or less, are located nearly every mile to half a mile and you can eat your hamburger while driving. And the same goes with most fast food items. It’s extremely cheap calories, and it’s designed to make people enjoy eating it even if it’s total shit. If that hamburger cost me $45 at McDonald’s, I wouldn’t touch the thing, but to make myself one, even if it’s a little nicer does cost me nearly that… You have to include the cost of your time as well not just the initial cost of the groceries.