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• When it comes to fighting obesity

I’ve never really liked it when anyone begins a sentence with, “When I was a kid …” Um, that being said, when I was a kid, the words “healthy” and “school lunches” were seldom used in the same sentence. Down home, “healthy” simply meant “tastes bad.” If the students didn’t like a particular entrée, it was somehow assumed that it was a healthy entrée, even if it had been cooked in butter for five hours. The whole school lunch concept seemed to be based on some sort of dare. School lunch was like being forced to watch a Robin Williams movie — you didn’t expect to enjoy it or even understand it, and when it was over, there would no doubt be a bad taste in your mouth.

I remember when a new policy came into effect that stated a kid wasn’t allowed to go to noon recess until everything on his or her plate had been cleaned up. This caused quite a panic until my friend Paul saved everyone’s ass and came up with a plan. It’s amazing how much inedible food can be stuffed into an empty 10-ounce milk carton. Our plates were theoretically clean, we went to recess and no one was the wiser. No one was the healthier either, but little kids care far more about recess than a good cholesterol number.

Times have changed. A recent University of Minnesota study noted that school lunch sales don’t decline when healthier meals are served to children, and the cost difference can be negligible. The study was done by three economists, so they really just looked at the numbers, and I’m fairly sure enjoyment of the meal didn’t play any sort of role, but it does surprise me that sales didn’t go down.

The report sort of concludes it’s possible to get our children to eat healthier when they’re at school and, thus, be in better shape. I personally can only conclude the students became too lazy to seek out better-tasting foods.

I know it’s all part of our country’s effort to make our children healthier and I should get on board, but I think we might be going about it in the wrong way. One of the easiest ways food companies have found to do this is by tricking the kids. “Hey, you want a hot dog for lunch? I mean, it’s made of soy or turkey, and it’s not very good, but it is still a functional vehicle for your ketchup delivery. What do you say? It’s almost like good food, and it’s good for you!” They even come up with clever names for meat substitutes to make them more appealing. A hot dog becomes a not dog. A rib becomes a fib. A hamburger becomes a shamburger. You get the idea. “Awesome, it’s crappy, and it’s got a fun name. Load me up, bitches.”

I’m just saying I’m not sure it’s the nature of the food that kids are eating that’s making them obese. The same goes for the adults. I should point out that I’m about the last fella who should be talking about good eating habits, but I can make an observation.

I was husky, at least that’s what my pants from Sears said on the label, when I was a little kid (and I’m back to that way as an adult), but once I got to be seven or eight, most of the excess weight I’d been carrying around magically disappeared.

I ate the same terrible things I always had, but I suddenly looked much healthier. The only thing that changed was that I started doing something on a regular basis, something besides sitting on the couch and watching TV. I started playing sports and riding my bike places and fighting and all of those lovely things children used to do — no diet or fake meat, just movement.

Look, I know everyone should eat better and all that, but I think what it comes down to as much as anything else is that many of us, including the children, really don’t do a damn thing anymore. We work hard, but it’s only taxing our brains, not our bodies. Never in the history of our country have so many people spent so many hours a day sitting on their asses. Sure we may be working, but that in no way keeps us from sitting on our asses as much as possible. I’m not sure why everyone’s so surprised about everybody getting bigger. I’m also not sure there’s much we can do about it. I suppose we could all run in place while we surf the Internet, but honestly, that just sounds so terrible. Physically working is not really in our nature anymore.

We used to be a much more active group of people, and we never had the problems we have today with obesity. I would wager no coal miner has ever walked out from the mine and thought he needed to run five miles to get some exercise. I would also bet very few folks have dug ditches all day and felt like they needed to get to the gym each evening to burn a few more extra calories. Back in the day, farmers hardly ever did Pilates after they finished planting a field. There’s a reason there are gyms popping up everywhere you look. These days, we have to get tired and in shape on our own time.