All shocking from a party that professes smaller government intervention. They say one thing and legislate just the opposite. The ban on large soft drinks in NYC is sure to have manufacturers breathing down his neck and forget about campaign contributions the next time around if this legislation passes. Sorry mayor you can't legislate bad behavior. What's next? Outlawing sugar. Or maybe he'd like to add butter, ice cream, pizza and any number of fattening foods to the list. And who took the flack for wanting to get kids up and active? Wouldn't have been a certain black woman at the white house would it?
No Mikey the way to change things is to encourage physical activity by digging up the paved over playgrounds that we all once enjoyed as kids that are now just parking spots. Some sports equipment and the return of gym class is far cheaper than paying a cardiologist later in life. Kids are looking for an incentive to do more than pig out and balloon up from video games. There used to be a presidential award given to kids who demonstrated a degree of fitness. They need a challenge. They are at the age where competition is ingrained in them. Use that fact. But no we sit and watch the latest of reality shows and let others sweat while we pig out on soda and chips then tweet snarky comments to our friends. What do you mean you're bored? But there are far worse things of chat rooms where junior sits staring at a screen with others staring at a screen and nobody is saying a word. My god you couldn't invent a drug powerful enough to induce such a state of catatonia. Now where's that two liter bottle of coke and the family size bag of chips? Anybody seen my smokes?
And to its' discredit the big pharma has managed to have a solution to ills we never thought we had. Excited? We have a pill for that. Depressed? Ditto. Shy, Angry, Anxious? Over sexed, under sexed, confused? There is a pill for just about the entire gambit of human emotion. And it does seem odd that many of these problems have cropped up in just the last 30 years or so with removal of physical activity is schools. We have put the emphasis towards the non physical both in schools and in the work place. So is it any wonder our spawn are obese and diabetic? We have been eating like kings of old and are starting to look like them too. But a piece of legislation is not going to change that. And the solution is very cheap if anyone would stop to consider it. You could even ask the kids for some ideas. I'm sure they could come up with some very creative competitions.
5 comments:
Good points, all of them. When I started University, Phys Ed was mandatory in First Year and it should still be and in highschools too.
And you cannot legislate morality nor behavior to any extent. If we could, I expect the world would be a better place.
Fuck Herr Bloomberg, fuck everyone.
You shut up it's 40% less efficient and that's a fact.
It's 40% percent less efficient in your world, and that's a fact, so you shut up. :-)
Buy all the four dollar a gallon gas you want, I don't give a shit.
At present there are no requirements for phys ed in either high school or college here now. It was dropped from college when I went and that was many years ago.
Gas is under $4 a gallon here and falling so we'll see who comes out ahead. :P
Bloomberg, who has gone from Republican to Democrat to independent is Aa heart a health nazi who goes over the top trying to force better habits on people. That doesn't work.
Raise taxes high enough on tobacco products, you just make it worth people's while to carpool in periodic trips down to the Carolinas where they're relatively very cheap. Boost taxes a bit more and you spawn a black market. Truckers and others pick up a case or two of cigarettes down there out of their own pocket, then retail them in the NYC area at a profit that's still dollars cheaper per pack than locally bought ones. Or, they can wholesale them to underground dealers who also take a profit but still under price legal, taxed packs. This excess in the name of health helps teach disrespect for the law and creates another law enforcement headache that could end up costing taxpayers plenty.
As for jumbo sodas, those are the invention of the fast-food industry. Wastebasket-sized sodas help them justify charging as much for a cheeseburger-fries-soda combo as a solid two-course meal at a nice, full-service restaurant cost not that long ago. The big sodas are probably the most profitable thing they sell, especially when most of them their own Brand-X syrup, not real Coke or Pepsi. People who want a half gallon of pop can just buy two quarter-gallon sodas. Problem solved.
Re: exercise, I worry not just about physical activity but kids getting to play enough outdoors, exercising their imagination and ingenuity. Things like building forts out of big boxes, teepees out of branches and old blankets, etc. There's plenty to be learned and enjoyed out away from the Nintendo, big-screen TV, PC and cell phone.
The town where I live has a lot of small public parks that have playground equipment, pullup bars, monkey bars, etc. I use the pullup bar all the time in some of these parks, and I'm usually the only person there.
Oddly enough, some of these parks have signs saying the equipment is only for children under 12 (not that I pay any attention to that bullshit). I don't know if the Powers That Be want everyone to get soft and flabby, or if they want everyone to purchase a gym membership instead of exercising for free.
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