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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."
Calling out specific systems(without research: "did the NES/SNES keep more asses in more seats for longer than the Playstation" is a perfectly valid empirical question) seems counterproductive at best, libelous at worst.
The basic fact that consuming more energy than you use makes you fat, though, seems too obvious to even bother arguing about anymore. This is conservation of energy, not subtle epidemiology.
"lets throw in a gaming console amongst other big culprits that help fatten up kids" If your fat its because you didnt exercise enough as a kid and you probably ate shit. More so, its probably the fact that you ate shit. Oh, and your parents probably didnt push activity and exercise on you. "LETS BLAME SONY!" I call it a witch hunt
It barely even mentions the playstation. It seems to be more pissed off at soda then anything else.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
What about the cutting of recess at schools and short lunch times at some of them.
Some schools even have a recess / lunch where you have to eat fast to get some recess time!
also what is point of a 30min lunch when you have to use half of just waiting in line to get / pay for the food?
Does reading books also cause obesity?
America is sugar addicted and everything we eat has corn syrup and corn starch.
What about the fucking PARENTS, Michelle? I'd point at the parents as the single biggest reason for childhood obesity. It's supposed to be their job to make sure their kids remain healthy and active. Instead, a lot of them are just fine grabbing McDonald's and letting the kids stare at the TV for hours on end. It all boils down to people. Politicians just love pointing the finger at everything but people, because people vote. Playstations don't.
Bread and grains have been an enormous component of staple diets for ages. Even today, in a lot of third-world countries, people eat primarily starch. It's only recently that this has contributed to widespread obesity. I'm going to have to say that it's not as simple as people eating grains and other starches.
Maybe part of the problem is demonizing things that are the unpopular food item of the moment. Like saturated fat. Or starch.
Actually, it's all down to heavy consumption of wheat and grains, and starches too, high fructose corn syrup, and the demonization of saturated fat.
I have always thought that perhaps federal corn price supports have lead to overproduction of corn, thus artificially cheap high fructose corn syrup, thus artificially cheap sodas/crap foods, thus obesity.
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Corporatism.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I'd throw subsidies for meat production into that ring as well. Subsidizing meat leads to overproduction of meat, which in turn leads to cheap processed low-quality meats, which is what fuels McDonald's and all the other fast food chains out there. I think the real irony is that the government is paying these companies (vicariously) to make us fat with one hand and then dishing out all these bucks to fight obesity on the other hand. If the government would just stop mucking up the system in the first place we would all be a lot healthier mentally and physically!
No soft drinks, no pre-packaged boxed snack foods (seldom cereal), no chips (well, chips and salsa occasionally). Seldom eat out at fried food joints (maybe once a week). Stick to wheat breads, fruits and vegetables, yogurt, meats, sushi and rice.
Essentially if you cut out all the 'americanized' boxed and packaged foods that are mainstream, as well as soft drinks, your overall feeling of health increases rapidly. Did I also mention coffee and beer/wine are essential? And no, I don't miss ANY of that crap processed and preserved food I've cut out.
If you listen to and feel out your body just a little, and think about the history of mans food consumption, its all pretty clear what the body CAN effectively use for food.
If pointing a few fat fingers at videogames is the best our fearful leaders can do to address the obesity epidemic, it's already over.
America is laboriously waddling itself into an early grave rife with gout, diabetes, pancreatitis, and countless other chronic ailments that turn the phrase "quality of life" into a cruel joke.
The problems come from every direction: Subconscious feeding instincts that don't translate well to calorie abundance, marketing honed to razor sharpness that capitalizes on these instincts, food designed to do the same, and a general lack of accountability from top to bottom all combine to create a horrifying socioeconomic problem that I don't see us pulling out of.
Nobody cares. About themselves. About what the things they sell others do to those people.
Just give everyone that wants it some meth. Keep the daily doses reasonable and people's brains would take longer to turn to mush from the drugs than their current sedentary lifestyles.
You didnt RTFA. They call out inactivity, fast food, and soda.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
If kids spent all day reading books instead of playing games would they get equal blame? In both cases a kid is just sitting there doing nothing.
I was talking to my folks recently about whats going on in my hometown.
I grew up on a dead end street where lots of kids live. Lots of kids still live there. There is hardly any through traffic. When I was a kid, we'd play games on the street pretty regularly. Anything from street hockey, to improvised soccer, to water gun fights... you name it.
Recently a new generation of kids on that street started doing some of the same things. The police were called, parents fought and eventually it was decided that it was beyond inappropriate for the kids to play there. One of the main reasons that seemed to be cited was a large fear of child abductors and the fact that they couldn't always be supervised.
So thanks to years and years of pampering and isolating our children from fears both real and manufactured, a new generation of kids won't have any memories of the street I grew up on. Instead they'll all stay inside and get fat in front of their Playstations and we'll blame the Playstations for all their problems. Might as well put them on Ritalin to keep them from using all that pent up energy, too.