Preschool Obesity

Obesity appears to be on the rise in our precious preschoolers. The blame is on poverty, uneducated parents and of course, the old standby; a high fat diet along with excess calories and lack of exercise. Poverty definitely contributes because all the inexpensive foods are carbohydrates and carbohydrates make us fat. I'm not so sure uneducated parents are to blame, but rather mis-educated parents. We are all taught to follow the food guide pyramid and avoid fat. Parents, trying to do the right thing for their kids, will buy low-fat cookies, crackers and ding dongs totally unaware that junk food, whether low or high in fat, is still junk food and most junk food is high in carbohydrates.

We didn't have problems with obesity 100 years ago. We have been dieting for over 30 years now on low-fat, high carbohydrate foods. We even have calorie free artificial sweeteners and what have we got to show for it all? Obesity is on the rise, even in preschoolers. I find it interesting that we blame obesity on saturated fat when our girths have exploded while decreasing saturated fat intake and increasing vegetable oil and carbohydrate intake.

But we continue to dole out the same advice: Avoid saturated fat, eat lots of whole grains, fruits and veggies. What do they call you when you do the same thing over and over while expecting different results? Oh yea, insane.

Basically, we have a bunch of insane people running around (no, they probably don't run...) in government teaching us all how to get fat in the guise of losing weight and then when we get fat, they blame us for eating too much of the fat we have been avoiding in order not to get fat. Now our children will be joining in on the fun.

If you're like me and want out of that game, ignore the food guide pyramid. Eat lots of saturated fat, no vegetable oils and no high fructose corn syrup. Feed yourself and your kids real food the way God made it and spend a little time each day running after the little tykes.