Healthy Choices for Healthy Children legislation–SB 210–passed both Houses of the Ohio Legislator. The bi-partisan legation aims to address childhood obesity. As reported by the Ohio Hospital Association, more than one in three children (35.6 percent) in Ohio is overweight or obese. The bill specifically targets increased physical activity, improved nutritional options, and body mass index (BMI) testing in Ohio schools. (Heath e-News+ June 4, 2010)
Commendable as this bill may be, its provisions like the following raise some questions:
* Providing free breakfast to eligible children during the school day;
* Requiring physical education (PE) teachers to have a PE license;
* Increasing parents’ awareness about their children’s health through BMI screenings.
The first provision-providing free breakfast–has been part of federal funded since the beginning of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This grand federal empowerment program has been a local school cash cow for both poor and rich school districts alike. So, why does Ohio legislators need to duplicate an existing program? Is the U.S. Department of Education too bankrupt to continue funding it? Does the feds require more local and state paper work to obtain those dependency enhancing programs? Or are Gov. Strickland and his liberal associates in both the White House and Congress inspiring Ohio politicians to attempt another attempt to double dip into taxpayers dwindling pockets? Besides being ignored by the powers that be, one answer to these questions is why not convince McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Bob Evans, etc. to contribute free breakfasts to their many community’s needy school children. This would provide such business endless “good neighbor” marketing fodder.
Besides, what does free breakfast have to do with reducing obesity? If schools serve bacon and donuts with breakfast. will that reduce body fat or obesity?
The second provision–requiring PE teachers to possess a license–is eye-popping. Who would have ever thought it possible for any Ohio teacher to teach without state certification or license? Could it be current unlicensed PE teachers (if they actually exist) are training kids to be lazy, computer mongering, and junk food connoisseurs? I think not! If finger pointing is called for, the big fat finger should be pointed at school officials wanting monetary kick backs from pop, candy, junk food machine vendor purchases by students and fat teachers. Another boney finger should be aimed at those same officials for permitting during homeroom TV programming whose advertising sells the same obese enhancing junk foods and other accouterments of that lifestyle. One more waging finger should alos be pointed in the same direction. The same school officials are often guilty of condonning lunch menus that mimic fat food restaurants.
At home, parents may cater to their kids’ whinny demands for fat tasty foods, but paternal state officials should have an even stiffer backbone. Alas, the paternal state also trains society’s parents and their children. Big sigh!
Of course, the obesity problem may be like other post-modern lifestyles; they were born that way. Those poor downtrodden fat kids are just victims of their DNA (and a few actually are). That means Ohio legislators and health professionals should be ashamed of themselves for forcing on them a false and degrading solution to an irresolvable condition. OAA (Obese Anonymous Association) may be there only refuge and hope. Better than that, they probably just need to come out of the closet and flaunt their fatty stuff.
But, please, don’t blame PE teachers. They do not deserve the regulating punishment of state licensure for the paternal state’s lack virtue and self-discipline. It is the paternal state itself that should be required to possess a license. That might enable the public to better regulate its attitudes and practices.
Last but not least is the third provision–the Body Mass Index. School-based BMI screening of children might help parents to regulate their children’s weight issues. However, it will never replace the good old fashion practice of making kids eat a healthy diet. The paternal state and its local school nannies are not necessary for a stern disciplining mom or dad.
What would help parents and the rest of Ohio citizens even more than a BMI index is a GSI index. No, GSI is not a gas saturation index. GSI is a government-spending index that would make Ohioans aware of how much wasting fat the paternal state is accumulating. After all, GSI would also remind Ohioans how much of their limited incomes the paternal state is consuming on the proverbial junk food called debt.
