"The design of a school itself might matter as much as something like a gym class. 'The environments in which we live affect not just our behaviors, but our lifelong attitudes about things like healthy eating and active lifestyles...It's also clear that it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese than to try to help adults lose weight.' — Fast Company
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6 Comments
"...it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese..."
One word: playground. (Okay, two words.) What kinds of outdoor play spaces are architects designing?
Knowledge of food and nutrition are important, but if kids are still sitting on their butts too much of the day, every day, at home and at school, they may still get fat on all those wonderfully healthy snacks.
Put the phones/screens in a drawer, then send the kids outdoors. They should be outside tearing around for at least three hours a day. Problem, if not completely solved, at least greatly mitigated.
Don't sell kids fatty crap like Fritos and soda. The problem is that schools and parents lack the balls to restrict their kids from eating junk food. The second problem is that parents sue everyone when their kid scrapes their knee on the swing set. Again, lack of balls.
we are so fucked if the Russians ever invaded. you need to be designing hug machines and world proof bubbles to code...........i feed my kids tons of candy and good ol' diner fast food on weekends,but we walk at least 3miles to get these things and play in a playground....the other day they asked "why don't we take the car, its hot out?"......responded -"you want to be fat?".........try that for education. Point at Frito chips and soda and state "this makes you fat, unless you go play 3 hours at the playground." .........is this a sign of just how lazy and ignorant the parents are these days?
Ditto to all of the above. This isn't rocket science and it doesn't need architects.
yup Thayer.....btw a few of my family members are educators and school directors and they note all the time how the state or school have to essentially make up for the lack of parenting accountability. as if it was the states or private institutions fault the kid can not make better choices. and then when the kid makes a bad choice its the schools fault,so only through oreventive architectural methods can the irresponsible be guided through life.
I do think that schools could help break the cycles of poverty and social alienation in districts where the male role model is all but absent and many children are being raised by the streets, but in this case, it sounds simple. Where I live they had this idea to partner local organic farmers with school cafeterias which is a slam dunk in so many ways it makes you wonder why it isn't happening asap. Just loose the junk food in school period and feed real food, and DON"T get rid of recess. Do those two things and whatever class you are teaching will benefit 10 fold.
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