Messages By: wobbly99

 The thing that makes everybody fat is our automobiles. The nation is designed to force people to drive everywhere and the human body is designed to walk. People walked across the country in the 1800's but we can't walk anywhere because we are all spread out and have to rely on our cars. That's a mountain of calories we don't get to use up. The obesity problem will spread as the use of cars increases in third world countries where people walked or used bicycles as their primary means of daily transportation.
  Most people can't walk to work like we used to and we're too busy earning a living to spare a couple of hours for the walking we would be doing if the nation wasn't designed for the ease of car use instead of people use. If you want to lose weight get out and walk or ride a bike to work. It's healthy, you won't have to count calories if you eat sensibly and control junk food intake and you'll be saving the planet from global warming. Your heart health will improve, you chances of getting heart disease will greatly diminish and you will lose the extra pounds just because you walk every day.

This may be coming from left field but maybe the trouble with the kids in the suburbs is the suburbs themselves. There is no town, community, or extended families to which children belong. If it takes a village to raise a child how do you raise a child without the village. Cars give young people far too much power and the ability to be alone and unsupervised by adults. Worse still is the measure of affluence that gives older children far too much free time when they should be studying, doing chores, working part time, or playing sports. Not sports of the organized and regulated but being outside doing healthy stuff. Where does a kid go to hang out when you live in the burbs and the kid is bored to death? We say we are buying homes to raise our families but are we building communities for them? Are there youth centers where kids can go to play or get help with their homework? And how will they get there? Maybe the suburbs we invented in the 50's are a poor substitute for the communities they left behind. I raised my kids in big city by choice. I live in a community within it where my children where known by name and people knew where I lived. I knew where they liked to hang out, where they played touch football and where they were after school. I knew their parents and teachers. My apartment was a hub of activity for board games and potato chips or just hanging out watching TV. My point is that kids used to have a place to be and plenty of people around to keep them out of trouble. We called them parents. Aurea Andino