Recently Michelle Obama has put forth and started her own campaign against childhood obesity.

This is of course a super long article but shortened the plan basically says this:

-Helping parents make healthy family choices

-Serving healthier food in schools

-Giving access to healthy affordable food

-Increasing physical activity

-Creating a coalition, Partnership for a Healthier America

 The part that intrigued me the most was the third thing on the list.

I wondered how could they possibly make cheap food more accessible in poor neighborhoods?

In the plan it says that some coalitions joined with the government are planning on investing 400 million a year in order to help local convenient stores and bodegas to carry more healthy food.

Although it sounds very promising I worry that the governments plan will not be able to penetrate the corruption  of the food industry. However it can't hurt, and everything else in the plan seems totally doable.

And even if for nothing else, at least this plan has got the country talking about the growing rates of obesity.

The problem with obesity is the way it is presented in America.

In the past, clothes and ads have been considered unhealthy for people because they showed models being extremely skinny, more so than the average person. People got upset about this for a number of reasons:

 -It was an unrealistic expectation of how someone should look.

-It could cause people to think their is something wrong with their bodies because they don't look that way.

-It may cause children to be more self contious about their weight.

 All of these points are of course valid reasons for concern, nobody should be trying to look like barbie, it's not healthy. However, a lot of people, in responce to the unrealistic advertisements people began treating weight preference in the media as an ism.

All of the sudden you have tons of parents telling their kids that "Everyone is made different, you should be proud of what you look like and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. If you are overweight that's ok, that's just the way you were made."

 This mentality is wrong.

Yes, everyone is made different, and yes you should always encourage children to be comofrotable in their own skins, and not to obsess or be insecure about the things they cannot change about their bodies. Of course what's most important is on the inside.

However, being overweight is very different than not liking the way that your head is shaped, or the color of your hair, or your skin. Being overweight is unhealthy and dangerous, it could kill you.

Saying that if you are a certain height you should be between a certain range of weight is not discrimination.  It is a fact. The media needs to stop telling people that it's ok to be overweight, and more importantly, parents need to stop telling that to their kids.

The Biggest Loser is one example of a show that has seen this problem and tried to help fix it. A lot of people critisize this show for being exploitative for the following reason:

It's not just a work out to help these people, it's a reality TV show made so that people can watch and make fun of the people on the show.

There are several counter arguements to this statement:

-If it was not a TV show, they would never have the funding they need to help these people lose this weight.

-This is more than just helping the people on the show. The idea behind making it a show is to encourage people to do something about their weight, show them that even with people who are extremely overweight it is always possible to become a healthy person. The purpose is not to exploit but rather to motivate American veiwers to take action about their health.

-This show does a great job of showing that over weightness isn't an ism, and it's not discrimation to point out that it's unhealthy to be overweight.

This show cannot be the only thing encouraging people to be healthy.

We need more programs and shows that encourage people to be, not freakishly skinny, not overweight, but just plain healthy people, and that needs to be the norm for our country.

The problem of obesity is more then just the fast food industry and the unhealthy food in the supermarkets and the advertisments.

A lot of it has to do with the way the importance of healthy eating is delivered to children.

For instance, in the school. In schools we feed children french fries, pizza, hamburgers, sloppy joes and yet people are surprised why this generation is so overweight.

 If students don't have access to healthy food at school, what makes you think they would at home or with their friends?

When there is "healthy food" it's prepared borning, and tastless at schools, like unsalted green beans with bad texture. I'm sure we've all had to taste that before.

In order to hope for a change in this problem, you cannot rely on hoping that children will just, stop going to Mc Donalds. You have to  prepare foods that actually taste good, but that are healthy for you. One school made it's own vegetable garden in order to teach students about healthy eating. Cullinary arts should be put back into schools, not just for girls like it was in the 70's but for all students.

Schools sould host monthly meetings for parents to talk about new recipes that parents like or ways to make everyday food a little healthier, educate parents about products that are both affordable and healthy so that they don't have to worry about the price of staying healthy.

If you teach children at a young age about healthy eating habits you will begin to see a drop in obesity. These students will grow up to be more healthy parents, and hopefully there will never be another generation that has to deal with this problem.

To get an idea of what the people of the millenial generation think of the obesity rates, I asked some people around my school what they thought of the following facts.

-Our generation is the first in years for the life expectancy to go down because of obesity.

-America is the worlds fattest country.

Harrison

I feel that it was kind of inevitable  that something like this would happen to our generation. I notice that every generation has some kind of major problem they have to face together. I guess this just means ours is obesity. Hopefully we'll come through like previous generations and fix this problem before it's too late. I just hope they do because I'm going to miss a lot of my friends.

A lot of people my age will just not worry about it until it's too late. People just assume becaue they've always had good metabolism  that they can just eat whatever they want. There's also the fact that people refuse to believe things areunhealthy that clearly have been proven unhealthy. If they here on the news that KFC is bad for you, they'll switch to Burger King, and if someone says, hey, Burger King is bad for you, they just say, oh no, it's KFC, I saw it on the news, they didn't say anything about Burger King.

André

I think that every one of us can make a better burger then at McDonalds or any other fast food place. The real reason why it's become so big of a problem is the ammount subliminal messages that get put into the media. While I agree that with the internet our generation gets access to a lot of recources that previous generations didn't, and I think predominately that's a good thing, it also means we see way more ads every single day telling us what to buy and what to eat.

I think the most important point made so far is André's. While yes as I mentioned before there is a lot of good infrmation that our generation has access to, lets face it, the average teenager isn't spending their time on the internet studying up on their nutrition facts. In order to fix this problem we need to have less adversismens about food, and more about healthy eating.

A lot of people would see this and think, "Man, black people are FAT!" Which... would be true based on these graphs, however, the correct responce should be, "DAMN poor people are FAT!" As stated in my previous blog post, obesity is directly correlated with  poverty and with number one on the list for the race with the highest poverty rates are African Americans.

 In the news obesity is hardly ever talked about  at all. And yet it's claiming the lives of 300,000 a year die from obesity.

 So how come it isn't getting more coverage?

 Because people take obesity as a joke. A lot of people, when they first heard my topic for this project, laughed at me. In the movies, obese characters are often times added for comedic affect, take a look at Norbit, or Big Mammas house. People aren't taking this as a serious issue, but it needs to be looked at seriously, otherwise there will never be any hope to fix it.

As you can see from this link, we didn't get fat gradually, this happened in just the last 25 years.

How did this happen so fast you ask? Because we got very good at selling unhealthy food, very, very, very fast. 

 In other countries, the poorest people are the skinniest, becaue in those countries, if you don't have money, you don't have food.

But here in America, companies like McDonalds or Wendy's will target the poor people by making all their products super cheap. Just take a look at the dollar menu! There is a direct link in America between obesity and poverty.

The statistics I found were very, very depressing to me.

I personally believe that my generation is the most aware and alive in a long time. I feel like we are going to have a lot to offer and bring this country as adults.

But some of us wont even make it that far.

When I think about the ammount of obese teenages I know, it scares me, because a lot of them are my friends.

It upsets me that a country with such good access to healthy nutrition facts is the most obese in the world. 

This information brought up a lot of points for me

• The food corporations don't care about anyones health or wellbeing
• Since the government is profiting as well, they don't care either.
• It's becoming the norm in our country
• It's not getting any news coverage so no one is worrying about it

 Some other things I realized were that unlike in other countries, where the poor are starving, here the most unhealthy food is marketed to the poorest people. A good example would be the mc donalds 1$ menu.

They choose to market to the lower class because they know they are less educated about nutrition and that will buy food for cheap cause they don't have the money to shop at whole foods or other stores like that.

This generation Millennials, is the first in years for the life
expectancy to go down instead of up. This is because of obesity.(Pia Martin)

America is one of the countries with the most wealth and "best"
education programs. According to Internet Wold Stats, we have more recourses to get information than
almost any other country in the world, second only to China.

Why then, does a country with so much access
to nutrition information, does America have the hightest rates for obesity in the
world?

 Some of the countries in this graph are neck and neck, and probably surpass each other year by year, however America is not leading by a small ammout, 6.4 percent.

1. Ask one of the poll workers a few questions
   1. Did you work the election last year?

                     Yes

1.  
   1. How is this year different from 2009?

                      There's not a big turn out this year, you know obama and all...

1.  
   1. What is the best part of being a poll worker?

                     Gives me something to do.

1.  
   1. What is the most difficult part of being a poll worker?

                      Nothing really... sometimes peoples information gets mixed up or they didn't bring the right stuff... but it's really pretty easy... Sometimes you get someone who doesn't speak english but we have Anette here for that. And sometimes they don't know how to use the machines... pretty basic though, haha... easy to show em how.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32050310@N07/4077154799/

1. Ask one of the poll workers a few questions
   1. Did you work the election last year?

                     Yes

1.  
   1. How is this year different from 2009?

                      There's not a big turn out this year, you know obama and all...

1.  
   1. What is the best part of being a poll worker?

                     Gives me something to do.

1.  
   1. What is the most difficult part of being a poll worker?

                      Nothing really... sometimes peoples information gets mixed up or they didn't bring the right stuff... but it's really pretty easy... Sometimes you get someone who doesn't speak english but we have Anette here for that. And sometimes they don't know how to use the machines... pretty basic though, haha... easy to show em how.

1. Ask one of the poll workers a few questions
   1. Did you work the election last year?

                     Yes

1.  
   1. How is this year different from 2009?

                      There's not a big turn out this year, you know obama and all...

1.  
   1. What is the best part of being a poll worker?

                     Gives me something to do.

1.  
   1. What is the most difficult part of being a poll worker?

                      Nothing really... sometimes peoples information gets mixed up or they didn't bring the right stuff... but it's really pretty easy... Sometimes you get someone who doesn't speak english but we have Anette here for that. And sometimes they don't know how to use the machines... pretty basic though, haha... easy to show em how.

This is my last blogh enty. I really loved this book a lot. In the end, even though a lot of people would describe it as a war story... it isn't really a war story. It's more of an account of how he changed as a person. I mean that change is a result of his going to the war... but it isn't a war story... I wouldn't even say it's an anti war story... it really didn't have much to do with the war at all. I wouldn't even say it was like a story in that it wasn't like... the standard, here's the main character, heres the conflict they have, here's how they try and resolve it, this is what goes wrong, this is how it ends, type of deal. It was more of just... like an account of how he changed over time... and what he went through and stuff... A lot of the kids didn't like that it wasn't in chronolgical order, but I liked it that way. That's like in real life. Like in real life you meet someone, you learn a bit about them; where they work, how old they are maybe, what kind of music they like. Then you get to know them better, they tell you things, more detailed things about themselves, maybe they tell you some sad things... and sometimes theres things about them you don't fully understand. Then they tell you things about their past and things kind of start to make sense. Like, oh, maybe that's why he doesn't like to talk about drugs, cause his dad is an addict, or, you know, not nessisarly rough stuff like that but... just... that's the way you meet people and get to know them in real life. You don't like, follow their every move from when they were little to when they die, you have to peice things together from things they tell you.

Another thing I noticed about this book that I like is that he's able to give amazing discriptions, and not just so that it makes you feel like you're there, any good write can do that, and if they can't... well they shouldn't be publishing books. But besides great imagry and feeling like you can imagine what a place looks like, he write so you can really feel what each character is feeling. And more then just empathizing with a character... I mean anyone can do that, I tell you my dad died, you're empathizing with me. But the way he rights it not just like you feel for that person, or even that you understand how they're feeling, it's like, you are that person for that time that you're reading it. And that in the next second, he moves to someone else and all the sudden you're someone else entirely... it's really great.

The things they carried blog 2

I noticed in this book that although they show you many, many character, and don't describe spend to much time on any one character, but somehow just from the little bit he spends on each character, you like, you get a good sense of them. Just like in real life you might not know about their past life or anything, but you can tell what kind of person they are just from a few things. This writer is able to give you just the right things and information to give you a sense of what kind of person they are. It's great.

Too often in our public schools we barrage our kids minds with useless, impersonal facts, dates, names, and events that
they have or at least don’t feel that they have, any connection with whatsoever. The idea behind this being that if the child is drilled with the information enough times that eventually they’ll remember it well enough to spit back at the next test. The problem with this philosophy is that while yes, maybe the student will remember the information long enough for the test next week, they’re going to forget it by the end of the month. Now you have a school full of students who all claim they hate American History cause they’ve taken if 5 times, yet if you ask them what year the civil war happened they’ll shrug and say “I dunno, whatever.” Now, in that class of students that took American History 5 times and hates history, you could have a child who has an extreme passion for history, only that kid is never going to know it.

For that student to realize their passion, they’re going to need to know a lot more than the date Abraham Lincoln was shot, or the name of the assassin. For a student to really remember anything about Lincoln's assassination, let alone understand it, you have to offer real world connections, relationships to the world that that child interacts with and lives through every day. If schools don’t to this, not only aren’t they going to inspire students to be interested in history, they’re going to extinguish any interest in history a student may have had before coming to the class, completely defeating the purpose of school altogether.

If subjects were taught, along with connections that students could identify with, you would instantly start to see more involved in depth conversations in classrooms, better more insightful papers and projects, and yes, you would even see better test scores because kids would better remember the information given to them.  Students, now with classes that felt more relevant to their lives, would be able to identify what subjects or topics they really feel strongly about, or that they feel really inspired by, or that they really get pumped about. This would help that individual decide what types of things their interested in, and, inadvertently, what career they’ll like to pursue.

A big problem in this country is that it’s so filled with people who don’t like the line of work they’re in, and would rather be doing something else. When you have people doing something as a job that they don’t like, it’s only natural they’re not going to be as enthusiastic or good at their job as someone who loves what they’re doing, therefore the job isn’t done as good as it potentially could be. If schools were to do a better job of helping students figure out what their passions are, then you’d have more people in lines of work that they actually enjoy and therefore have better qualified people doing those jobs making for a better overall country. Not to mention the depression rates of the country would be cut in half, cause we all know, the number one thing American’s are stressed about; work.

Overall I think if schools spent more time having class discussions about how things relate to their own lives, the individuals as well as the country as a whole would be a lot better off.

https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/640239/Andrew%20Chalfen.m4a

One thing I'm really digging about this book so far, is that, it's so poetically written, and normally a book will have like, the first and maybe last chapter be written poetically and the rest of the book just like a normal novel, but this book (so far) is very consistant with it's poetic... nature. The repitition, the way things flow as you read them, it's very easy to tell that the author was thinking not just about what would make a good story but also what sounds are pleasing to the ear, what sounds beautiful, what sounds harsh, what sounds edgy.