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american obesity in children

There seems to be a reluctance to face the growing problem of weight and obesity in the adult population today. But can we continue to ignore American obesity in children? We talk about more activity in the playground and healthier foods at the school cafeteria. But is not the real problem in the home?

Author: Kirsten Plotkin
Date: Nov 26, 2009 - 3:41:05 AM

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I am sure all parents worry about the food they give their children.   They recognize that American obesity in children is caused first and foremost in the home and they do their best to follow the recommendations they get from experts like Nutritionists. The trouble is, those experts are not real experts and they are equipped with the wrong information.

Not a single diet...Ever, that has been promoted by Nutritionists, dieticians and diet guru’s has ever gone through genuine scientific research. No human trials have been conducted to test the validity of the claims. The diets are false and most of them are eventually unmasked as false. But there is always a newer and equally bad diet to take its place.

Bad diets, by pseudo experts have turned perfectly healthy people into victims of food addiction. Children eat what the adults eat. If mom is addicted, chances are the children are also addicted.

It is still possible to get back to where we were, but not until the right people get enough pressure from the everyday people to do something about it.   Until then, we each have to concentrate on fixing our own family.

It you are an overweight Parent of overweight children you should not blame yourself. Instead you should take action. Ignore the diets and make a few adjustments to the family menu. It will not involve calories and there are no restrictions on how much you eat, but you need to change some foods.

I know you find it difficult to think about, but that is your addiction influencing you. Letting go of an addiction is always hard. The hardest part is to acknowledge you have an addiction and decide to conquer it. Once it is gone, so are the cravings.  It is easy to follow a healthy food plan when you no longer constantly think about food. It is then you can look in the mirror and smile back. You will know your best reward will soon be there when you look at your children.

If you choose not to act, the children will grow up and be part of an even greater number of people with weight problems and obesity. By then, maybe the number will be three quarters or more. I dare not think how many children will be affected. If you really want to know where to lay the blame for this catastrophe, then let me tell you how it all began.

The late seventies was a time when a lot of wild theories were flying around, many became facts and were later discredited, but a few became dogma. Dogma is a difficult thing to combat.

Some myths have been exposed over the years, but at least one remains.   That is the notion that in order to be a healthy human being, you need to follow a well balanced diet, preferably one devised by a nutritionist or dietician.

If that was really true, humankind would not have survived for all the many eons till today.   Even with plagues and famines people survived.   We are almost indestructible. Had we not been healthy, most of that time, our specie would have become extinct. Instead, human beings thrived, mostly in good health, at least till the seventies.

That's when Nutritionists found their market niche by pretending they had discovered cholesterol.  Suddenly they had a cure for everyone, including people who had never needed a diet.  They created the Pyramid diet. That's the diet with more than two thirds carbohydrate. Since then there has been numerous other diets and theories. The one thing they all have in common is "They Don't Work".  People simply get fatter with each diet.

It seems the time has come for the chickens to come home to roost. We are threatened from without with climate change and economic voodoo. At the same time we are also threatened from within by the very food we are encouraged to eat.   We eat way more food than our body needs, it is more than our metabolism was meant to process.

In addition, we diet erratically. This confuses our brain which sends messages to our metabolism to start converting the carbohydrate to fat and store it for the famine. What does the body do in a famine? Instead of processing the carbohydrates you eat into glucose to give you energy to burn, it turns it into fat to be stored on your body.

And you wonder why you get fat when you finish a diet? A big step to overcoming an addiction is to acknowledge it exists. Once you do, the last thing you will want is pass it on to your children. Curing american obesity in children starts in your kitchen, therefore it starts with you.

Cure yourselves and you will cure your children.   The alternative is to force your children to face the same decision with your grandchildren and that may be too late.

http://www.my-own-plan.com/cap/index4.html

Kirsten Plotkin Author

View all articles by Kirsten Plotkin

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