Addressing the Food Police

When I picked Samantha up from field hockey practice she asked What’s for dinner? And I replied Grilled shrimp, couscous, roasted asparagus and an arugula salad.

She was furious. She said What are you trying to do—starve me to death?

I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

We drank Kool-Aid, Coca-Cola and Tang (like the astronauts). For breakfast we had Carnation Instant breakfast or Sugar Smacks or Downyflake Waffles. For dinner we ate Swanson’s Pot Pies and Banquet TV dinners.

Iceberg lettuce, frozen French fries, Green Giant canned peas and Bird’s Eye frozen corn in butter sauce were our favorite vegetables.

Del Monte canned peaches or Libby fruit cocktail packed in heavy syrup was our source of fruit.

For snack we ate Lays Potato Chips with Lipton Onion dip.

Dessert consisted of Drakes’s Devil Dogs and Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake.

Such foods are the high sugar, high fat, nutritionally void menu items my generation or the generation after me would never give to their children.

Yet my generation, who ate all that blacklisted food, was not obese.

We were not obese because we ran around. We rode our bicycles. We walked.

We burned all the calories we consumed-- even if the calorie source was without a doubt nutritionally suspect.

Because if bad food choices were the begin-all and end-all of childhood obesity then none of us would have fit in our desk chairs in grammar school.

The prevention of childhood obesity is not simply remedied as President Obama’s Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act proposes.

And I realized Samantha was correct. For the amount of calories she burned on the field, her body needed more than the food I had prepared. Her diet needed more carbs and fat and a bigger portion to support the calories she burned. She was a teenager—and an athlete.

While well-intended, I was starving her to death—albeit with healthy food.

Because healthy food is only as healthy as the correct portion size. One can still starve to death or become obese on good nutrition.

And that is why there is a Facebook page called Nutrition Nannies to support the No Hunger Food Act—a bill aimed at addressing the harsh cut in calories in our nation’s schools. Because some of the kids in our schools are starving under the new regulations—regulations intended to keep children hunger-free.

Healthy weight is not just about the nutritional quality of the food, it’s about the consumption of the food as it is measured against the activity level of an individual.

The solution to childhood obesity is not one size fits all as the food police suggest—it isn’t pantyhose.