Healthy Eating
Did any of you have this happen to you as a kid that you were unable to stay on top of the latest fads and slang words? As soon as you'd pick up the latest stuff, all other kids would move on to something else and you'd be forever behind. Lately I feel the same about healthy foods. It's like I can never keep up with a lot of folks, on the 'net especially. By the time I finally realized that fast food and junk food were bad, my virtual friends had already excluded all bread, potatoes and pasta from their diet. By the time I cut down on carbs, they had moved on to all-organic and (cherry on top) quit eating red meat. I finally convince myself that I like oatmeal - my friends only accept steel-cut oats and stare at my Quaker brand like it's a triple cheeseburger with fries.
It's not that I have any health or weight problems, it's just that I'm tired of being the eternal uncool kid.
Of course, I had friends who started out with an innocent no-carb, no-sugar, no-salt diet and ended up with full-blown urine therapy. So in my opinion, there can be too much of a healthy lifestyle.
Apparently I'm not the one pondering these questions, as seen from the discussion at Michele's today. (Many thanks to Michele for always giving me material for blog posts). An English mother has an eight-year-old son that is five feet tall - pretty impressive height for an eight-year-old. Unfortunately, the kid also weighs about 300 pounds. The authorities considered placing the child in foster care, because his mother has failed to feed him properly, but reluctantly agreed to let her keep him. Many of the commenters at Michele's agree that the child needs to be taken away because his mother is not feeding him right.
This raises a whole lot of questions. Can they take my child away because he's overweight? Do I get to keep the other one, who is skinny? Who decides what consitutes healthy food? If I decide steel-cut oats are healthy, can I report my neighbors for not feeding their kids steel-cut oats? The list goes on. I think there's some overstepping of the boundaries going on here. I also think that, as one commenter stated, there must be something wrong with the kid's health as he is abnormally tall as well as overweight. Maybe the energy spent on trying to rip the kid away from his mom's evil clutches and into life-saving foster care could be used on getting him the medical attention he needs.
It's not that I have any health or weight problems, it's just that I'm tired of being the eternal uncool kid.
Of course, I had friends who started out with an innocent no-carb, no-sugar, no-salt diet and ended up with full-blown urine therapy. So in my opinion, there can be too much of a healthy lifestyle.
Apparently I'm not the one pondering these questions, as seen from the discussion at Michele's today. (Many thanks to Michele for always giving me material for blog posts). An English mother has an eight-year-old son that is five feet tall - pretty impressive height for an eight-year-old. Unfortunately, the kid also weighs about 300 pounds. The authorities considered placing the child in foster care, because his mother has failed to feed him properly, but reluctantly agreed to let her keep him. Many of the commenters at Michele's agree that the child needs to be taken away because his mother is not feeding him right.
This raises a whole lot of questions. Can they take my child away because he's overweight? Do I get to keep the other one, who is skinny? Who decides what consitutes healthy food? If I decide steel-cut oats are healthy, can I report my neighbors for not feeding their kids steel-cut oats? The list goes on. I think there's some overstepping of the boundaries going on here. I also think that, as one commenter stated, there must be something wrong with the kid's health as he is abnormally tall as well as overweight. Maybe the energy spent on trying to rip the kid away from his mom's evil clutches and into life-saving foster care could be used on getting him the medical attention he needs.
