Five Minutes of a Good, Clean Food Fight

A good, clean, food fight.  I didn’t say fair. Nick Gillespie’s adver­sary is lost in the Beany Babie ozone.

When I started high school I was a pudgy kid. When I got out four years later I had a 40 inch chest, a 32 inch waist, and I could run a mile in under 6 min­utes with­out try­ing too hard.  What hap­pened? Phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion class. Not any kind of diet restric­tion I can tell you.  I ate every­thing I got my hands on. At the local cow­boy steak place I’d eat a 2 pound porter­house, a big bowl of beans, and be look­ing around for more rolls. When you’re run­ning 10 miles a week, weight lift­ing, and doing hours of cal­is­then­ics eat­ing too much is really not a problem.

Today there are very few phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion pro­grams in schools. At least not rig­or­ous ones. In their drive to turn chil­dren into tractable Beanie Babies there is too much worry that somebody’s self esteem might be dam­aged if he can’t run as fast or lift as much weight or throw the ball accu­rately. When I was doing it, dam­aged self esteem was about the only thing that would get me to run a cross-​​country course in South­ern Ari­zona in Sep­tem­ber. I ended many a ses­sion over by the fence, puking.

Now they are wor­ried that kids are too fat. And their solu­tion?  More phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion? Some­thing that works? No! Their solu­tion is the pre­ferred method for deal­ing with every­thing: more laws reg­u­lat­ing behavior.

Hope you enjoy this. I did.

Many, many thanks to Hot Air for this gem.

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Tags: bureaucracy, children, obesity, physical education