Walking along the beach in San Diego last summer, I heard a mother ask her chubby toddler, "Do you want some tacos? Do you want to get some tacos?"
The child, far from starving, didn't seem very eager for the tacos. In spite of that, she got them.
The girl could not have been over four years old. She does not need tacos. If anything, she needs a taco. No more than that.
Figures from the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General tell us that almost 61 percent of adults and 13 percent of young children are overweight. Having spent a few months in Europe recently, I can testify that Americans have fat asses. We are terribly fat. We should be embarrassed and horrified that we are passing our gargantuan loads of blubber on to our children.
The Mesa Unified School District (MUSD) is trying to stop the problem before it starts.
While physical education programs nationwide are being scrapped due to budget concerns, MUSD has provided schoolchildren with pedometers. The instrument counts the number of steps its wearer takes in order to encourage the children to play and exercise more.
Most Mesa schools use the pedometers for physical education class only, but a few schools are asking the students to wear them all day. At the end of the day, children record the number of steps they took.
This is just the sort of program school districts should implement. It's simple, it's fun, and it helps solve a major issue in today's world.
The simplicity comes from the inherent competitiveness of children. Kids would walk back and forth for hours on end just to get a higher number of steps than their siblings or friends. Competitiveness would also persuade the children to play more physically intensive games.
While the effectiveness of the program has yet to be determined, any sort of innovation in physical education is welcome at this point. Since the Mesa School District's pedometers were donated, the district circumvented the budget constraints. If they hadn't been donated, supplying every student with a pedometer would be prohibitively expensive for many school districts.
However, considering the current focus on rising health care costs due to obesity, particularly the increasing number of diabetes cases among children, other enterprising school districts should have less trouble finding organizations to finance the program. The federal money for such programs is also becoming more available following the widespread concentration on the obesity problem.
According to the U.S. Surgeon General, weight problems cost the United States over $115 million in 2002. Being overweight can lead to an astounding number of health problems including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, respiratory issues and cancer.
Weight problems can cause mental health issues as well. With the importance that Americans place on image, being overweight causes a loss of self-esteem and depression. Eating disorders such as bulimia and extreme dieting can also be caused by a poor self-image.
Kids have enough to worry about with peer pressure, puberty, problems at home and learning disabilities. Throwing something preventable like a budding weight problem into the mix condemns those afflicted to playground taunts and alienation.
The solution to dealing with the 13 percent of school-age children who have weight problems is not to ignore it in consideration of their "feelings," but to teach them how to overcome it early so they can enjoy the few short years of childhood they have in relative peace.
Kym Levesque is a journalism junior. Reach her at kymberly.levesque@asu.edu.
