Eating habits
When kids are hungry, it’s simply easier for working parents to pull into a fast-food restaurant than it is to fix a nutritional home-cooked meal. While the food may be tasty, it’s high in calories and sodium. As a result, it should come as no surprise that kids are eating too much salt. It’s today’s “eat-on-the-run” lifestyle that’s causing our current obesity epidemic.
Kids shouldn’t be facing medical issues such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes Type 2, which used to be an adult-onset diagnosis. Being that it’s food-related, eating habits need to change; it’s up to parents to take charge and set good examples.
— JoAnn Lee Frank, Clearwater, Fla.
Unhealthy choices
I switched from white rice to brown rice several years ago because reports claimed the latter was healthier. Now reports claim that brown rice may contain more arsenic, so I suppose I’ll eat peeled potatoes for my starch.
I’m disheartened by the growing list of food and drink that’s said to be bad for me. I limit my intake of red meat and eggs and stopped drinking milk; now I’m being told that grape and apple juice have high levels of arsenic, diet soda may be damaging my brain and that the acid in citrus drinks isn’t good for the stomach lining. Since I can’t tell good wine from the bad stuff and never developed a taste for beer, there isn’t anything to “wet my whistle” at meals except water (bottled, of course, because what comes from the tap is said to be loaded with impurities). However, I refuse to give up my occasional martini — “Shaken and not stirred, bartender, and with an olive or pickled onion and not lemon peel.”
— Hosea L. Martin, Chicago
Sugar effects
Your Sept. 19 Page 1 article about too much sugar in our diets, especially regarding the fact that fructose makes for a fatty liver, was informative. As the wife of a liver-transplant recipient, this is the No. 1 reason livers are deemed unsuitable for donation. The fatty portions do not filter, and our doctor tells us the pool of suitable livers is diminishing because of it.
If you have signed a donor card or are planning on live liver donation, you need to know this.
— Sheila Rutledge, Warrenville
Big Brother
Living healthy and being healthy is important. Americans have been able to fight off communicable diseases very well and eradicate some, but now due to our unhealthy lifestyles, we are experiencing a rise in noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease; are we not allowed the freedom to live these lifestyles?
New York has passed some very interesting laws that would appear to limit the rights of a New Yorker. Why is it that we cannot make these decisions for ourselves?
If I choose to eat and live unhealthy, then I am forced to face the consequences of those actions. I understand that there are societal effects of my actions and that if I were uninsured, the cost of my health care would fall on taxpayers, but where do we draw the line?
Will we allow other cities to follow suit? We must pay attention to the freedoms we are giving away because, once gone, they are harder to get back. We must study and understand the legislation, the idea behind it and the effect it will have on our daily lives so that this Big Brother motif will not happen.
— Jonathan Winarski, Chicago
Proper portions
The soda ban in New York is in the right direction to redefine what is normal. Over the years, American restaurants have created a culture where bigger is the norm. In order to help change poor health decisions, I think other states should soon follow the example New York is setting.
Many people argue that this ban is taking away individuals’ rights to make their own choices. But what many may not realize is that they’ve already been stripped of their rights to choose by businesses like these. We have limited menu options and limited choices on serving sizes based upon what each restaurant decides. The truth, however, is quite the contrary.
This ban forces each restaurant in New York to redefine its sizes by making the previously smallest size the largest. This may perhaps instigate these restaurants to even come out with smaller options.
The problem today is that eating unhealthy is much easier than eating healthy. By re-evaluating what has become a largely distorted norm and instituting proper portion sizes, I believe New York’s soda ban is a step in the right direction.
— Bernadette Lim, Loyola University, class of 2013, School of Nursing/Health Systems Management, Chicago
Healthy lifestyles
As a physical education teacher, it is my job to help young people develop habits that will serve as the basis for a healthy lifestyle into adulthood. As a country, we need to take a step back and remember what we already know and what I tell my students every day: The recipe for a healthy lifestyle contains two large ingredients — healthy, wholesome foods in proportion and a big serving of physical activity.
In this culture of computers and TVs, what we need is to educate our kids about the value of being active and making healthy choices. Through awareness, education and being led by example, students can learn the importance of playing soccer over video games, and that an excess of anything in life has consequence.
Only by working together will we be able create the environment where well-rounded, active lifestyles flourish.
— Irwin Hermanowski, youth coach, St. Vincent DePaul Center, Chicago
Football-induced injuries
I am the author of “Unbreakable Resilience: Leap of Faith Stories to Live By,” a book that shares the story of eight Chicago-area teens who endured spinal-cord injuries while playing high school football and hockey. I am also the founder of Gridiron Alliance, a nonprofit that provides mentoring and resources to these athletes and their parents.
Finally, someone is saying what we’ve advocated for years: While the National Football League is raising awareness for research on concussions, these head-on-head collisions can exact even more damage (and societal cost) when they prompt catastrophic, spinal-cord injuries.
But the game goes on, and made even more glamorous, perhaps in a way to hide the ugly truth.
Take for instance the Allen, Texas, high school that recently completed its $60 million, 18,000-seat stadium. It’s built in the classic, college horseshoe shape, with state-of-the-art lighting, HD scoreboard, weight room and press box. They seem to do everything big in Texas.
But zero dollars were invested in catastrophic injury insurance for the players who’ll give blood on this field, if not worse. When that happens, everyone pays.
Paralyzed Chicago-area high-school football player Rob Komosa, for instance, was 17 years old when he suffered a C-1 spinal-cord injury at football practice. A lawsuit with the school district resulted in a $12.5 million payout, but the total cost to society — in lost wages for him and the family members who must care for him, ongoing medical care and for long-term health care — will likely exceed that amount.
The rationale almost parallels that of the exploding gas tanks found on those Ford Pintos decades ago. It turns out that it was more cost-effective for the car company to simply pay the death benefits, instead of recalling the cars and installing an $11 plastic shield.
Let’s consider the human toll that these football-induced, spinal-cord injuries take on our young players. While we can’t slow the speed of the game or the violence that these head-to-head collisions take, we can take the precautions of providing catastrophic insurance for each player who takes to the field.
— Don Grossnickle, Arlington Heights
Keeping young
I met a 90-year-old woman who was bagging groceries at a local supermarket after having walked a mile to work. I asked what her “secret” was and her reply was, simply: “Stay interested.”
I think I may have found a cure for later-life diseases of the mind and it hasn’t been all that painful or profound. I do a crossword puzzle, every day; read books; take piano lessons; work out every day for an hour. And I make it a point to find friends both young and old; there is something to be learned from both.
Am I a “super ager”? No. I am a man who is simply staying interested by continuing to challenge myself and stay in the game of life. I am not yet ready to take a permanent seat in front of the TV.
I believe dementia, Alzheimer’s and age-related memory loss are due to the fact that so many older people simply drop out because they think that’s what society expects them to do. But times are a-changing.
So when I go to do my standup comedy gig tonight (at nearly age 75), don’t call me a super ager. I’m just doing my thing. The game ain’t over till it’s over.
— Mel Novit, Morton Grove
