Lack of physical activity key to obesity

Television has been blamed for all manner of contemporary ills, not the least of which are sexual promiscuity and violence among young people. The latest headline is that television time is linked to childhood obesity.

A report in the September issue of the International Journal of Obesity concluded that the global epidemic of obesity among children has even reached New Zealand, where researchers studied children’s TV viewing habits and body-mass index. Guess what they found? Evidence that watching too much television makes children more likely to become overweight.

Nearly 1,000 children were studied every two years between the ages of 5 and 15 to analyze their body-mass index and the number of hours they watched TV each day. “By age 26, 41 percent were either overweight or obese, an outcome that was significantly related to the amount of television they watched during childhood,” the report stated.

This is nothing new, being a fat couch potato. Nor is it surprising that everywhere we look fingers are pointing at reasons youth are growing more and more overweight. Fast-food restaurants are the reason; snack machines in schools are the reason; too many carbohydrates; too much soda.

Indeed, those culprits may contribute to many kids’ obesity, but the obvious reason is lack of physical activity. If the same children romped outside after school each day instead of sitting in front of a computer playing video games, you can bet they’d stay trim.

When is the last time you saw a stout roller-skater or fat track runner or hefty gymnast? When did you notice an obese kid playing hopscotch for hours or dodgeball, or jumping rope or playing touch football or climbing trees or ice skating.

Or working, for that matter. When did you see a fat kid raking leaves in a neighbor’s yard or mowing his grass? You see no chubbies stacking wood in the shed during after-school hours or weekends or hauling seaweed in wheelbarrows for fall mulch.

Every lean fisherman in these Down East waters tells about childhood chores or other physical activity that kept them fit – and prepared them for the strenuous work they do as adults. It might have been ice skating in the meadow or rowing in and out of every harbor mackerel fishing, but also it could have been scrubbing the floor or patching the roof.

They didn’t sit around the house watching TV or surfing the Web. They didn’t sit period, not with chopping wood or mending barns or hunting deer.

Kids today have it pretty soft … and are.