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White House Fingers PlayStation As Obesity Culprit
theodp writes "The winners of the childhood obesity infographic design contest sponsored by GOOD and First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative are in, and the overall winner calls out Sony's PlayStation as a major milestone on its timeline of childhood obesity (together with Coke, Pepsi, mall food courts, fructose and high sugar tariffs, TV, McDonald's, and other fast food). Somewhat ironically, the First Lady's other anti-childhood obesity efforts include a $60,000 video game contest."
Yeah, look at any fat kid and you will notice one constant among them: fat parents. Its not genetics, but overall lifestyle.
I play video games more than ever now and have attained a below-average BMI and am well past what my doctor calls "clinical fitness" since ditching a car and biking to work every day. Singling out any one factor of lifestyle is missing the point; its overall lifestyle composition that matters.
I'm going to skip using my mod points to respond to your BS. There's nothing about our economic system that "forces" both parents to have a job - if that was true, then when we were much more capitalist, it would've been common for women to work instead of staying at home. What changed is that people wanted a much higher standard of living (bigger houses, more / nicer cars, fancy clothes, 60" tv's, etc) and in order to pay for all of that, both people need a job. It's also why there are plenty of homes that still have one parent who stays home and in exchange they don't have a massive house and 3 brand new cars.
Given our current unemployment rate, it's obvious that society has no pressing need for people to put in that many hours. Salaries have plummeted compared to the GDP/capita.
It's called "increased productivity" and it's the driving force behind all wage increases and economic recoveries. Companies cut labor to save money and then require the remaining employees to be more productive - this allows them to cut costs at a higher rate than production falls. It's also why hiring is the LAST thing that happens during an economic recovery, because companies rely on the increased productivity until they have no choice for increasing production but to hire more workers, since they don't want to hire new workers and then the economy dips again and they're stuck holding the bill.
But what would I know, I'm only in grad school for Economics......
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
We are not cows. We don' t need bacteria to allow us to receive caloric benefit from the diet we choose.