He ain't heavy, he's my...oh, wait. He is kinda heavy.

A lot of us take for granted our ability to bend down and tie our shoes.  It's easy for us to fit in the backseat of most cars when necessary.  We can find clothes in our size at most stores.  But there are literally an estimated 42 million children worldwide who don't have that luxury. 

It's not just an issue of eating less and moving more - we need to make sure that people have access to fresh, healthy food for their kids.  Providing healthy school lunches (and making them more affordable than the $1 convenience lunch packs at the grocery store), is a good first step.  Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has shown us how to get school food programs changed.  With community support, we, too, can ask schools to eschew the frozen foods they receive from vendors and instead choose to spend a few extra minutes preparing fresh food for school lunches.

But why is this such a problem?  Can't we expect parents to think about their kids' futures and feed them accordingly?  No.  No, we cannot.  Without enough education about the most likely effects of raising kids on a fast food diet, many parents think that they simply can't afford or don't need to make sure their kids have nutritionally balanced meals. 

Apple slices are fine, but preceding them with a double cheeseburger and full-sugar soda is a bad idea, so that fast food kids' meal might not be the best choice.  For the same $4, that parent could have made a sandwich with whole grain bread, sliced chicken, spinach, and tomato, and accompanied it with an orange and a bottle of water - a quick trip to the grocery store and you've got food for a week, for less than five days' worth of fast food. 

Here's what's going on:  we're teaching our kids not only to eat processed convenience foods in lieu of homemade meals, we're teaching them to be so lazy that a homemade meal is never an option.  Why spend 20 minutes in the kitchen when you can spend 5 minutes at the drive-thru?

Because obese kids have a shorter lifespan.  They can develop diabetes and other health problems, making their care and medical expenses higher than those of healthy kids.  They might suffer from lowered self-esteem, be victims of teasing, and possibly end up presenting with not just physical diseases, but mental disorders, too.

We have to stop this pattern.  We have to make sure our kids grow up smarter about their food choices, smarter about their health, smarter about their own bodies.  We have to show them we care, so they start caring, too.