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Want a sure-fire way to protect your children from obesity?
Join the Mennonites.
No, really. It's not a joke.
Wednesday at the Living Arts Centre, Canada's leading expert on childhood obesity, Dr. Mark Tremblay, gave a scary presentation on the state of our nation's youth.
Tremblay presented a blizzard of charts and graphs to the forum on Child Obesity Prevention sponsored by Peel Health. They all added up to looming disaster for the next generation.
For the first time in our history we have children being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at ages 10 and 12. In China, detox centres are set up to help children so addicted to the Internet that they literally cannot tear themselves away from the screen for days.
"Nature did a good job for a quarter of a million years of keeping us at a healthy weight but we've changed all that in one generation," said the Statistics Canada health advisor.
Lots of people have lots of theories about why things are the way they are: because there aren't enough physical education programs in schools, because there aren't enough rinks and pools, and because those in the lower socio-economic bracket can't afford recreation programs and are prone to buying cheaper, fat-laden foods.
In a couple of minutes, Tremblay put the lie to all of that by talking about the study he and a group of researchers did this year on Old Order Mennonites.
They found that Mennonites are fitter, stronger and leaner than the rest of us, with no organized sport, no diets and a poverty-line-or-below income.
It all comes down to one thing, said Tremblay, Mennonites incorporate a lot more daily activity in their lives. Children aged 7-13 were getting about three hours of activity every day, doing chores, walking to school etc.
Of course, no electricity and an abhorrence of modern conveniences does cut down on distractions such as television and computers.
The point is, that we all know how to make things better. Instead of spending a fortune enrolling your kids in hockey and spending your life ferrying them back and forth to the rink, you're probably better off buying a net and plunking it in your driveway and letting them have at it. You can play goal until you're in shape.
The problem is that the obvious answers to the obesity crisis, eating more fruits, vegetables and whole wheat fibres, exercising more and turning off the TV are just too damn obvious for us.
You don't have to join the Mennonites but you can turn back the clock by heeding the benefits of a simpler life.
Breaking news. This just in: You on the couch there watching that weigh-loss reality show called Big Fat Losers. If you get off your duff and walk around the block with your kids, and make it a daily habit, you can spend hours every week trying to figure out whose fault this obesity thing is.