Shame on us for letting our children become obese

It might seem strange to pick up the Sunday paper today, a day on which some 20,000-plus athletes are in Washington for the Marine Corps Marathon and its accompanying 8-kilometer race and 1-mile kids fun run, and read about the obesity problem with today’s American children.

Our generation, the baby boomers born in the late 1950s and 1960s, were turned on to physical education and fitness. We hungered for sports. We craved activity. We drove the second and current running boom that has seen unprecedented growth, with huge marathons and half-marathons popping up all over the nation and 5Ks everywhere.

But what baffles me is that we allowed our kids to become the most sedentary generation ever. Shame on us.

We built video games to occupy our children while we went off to train. We built computers and instant messaging to babysit our kids once more while we put in some more miles.

Meanwhile, we allowed our schools to eliminate the physical education requirement to make room for computer classes. You certainly do not want your child to be the only one on the block who has to walk next door to talk with the neighborhood kids because he or she does know not how to IM them.

We decided with our full-time jobs and busy lives that it was much easier and quicker to hit the drive-by window at McDonald’s than to cook a nutritious, low-cal meal. We allowed our schools to sell out to the almighty dollar by lining the cafeteria walls with carbonated soda machines.

We decided it was acceptable for our kids to be unhealthy, unfit and, sadly, even obese.

According to Running USA, a nonprofit trade association that promotes road racing and long-distance running, more than 15 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight, and another 15 percent are at risk of becoming so. The health toll on these children during their lifetimes will be profound. Approximately 300,000 deaths a year are attributed to unhealthy dietary habits and sedentary behavior.

Efforts to combat this trend have been under way at the Montgomery County Road Runners Club since 1989. Each year the club conducts its Halloween Young Run, which falls next Sunday this year so it does not conflict with today’s Marine Corps Marathon.

The distances are quarter-, half- and one-mile runs for those 12 and under. To sign up, check out www.mcrrc.org or call 301-353-0200.

The event was created to support physical education teachers in Montgomery County schools and to encourage them to add a six-week running program that would train students for the Halloween run.

That first year, nine schools and 220 children took part. Today, the field caps at 3,000, making it one of the nation’s largest children’s running events.

This year some 264 students (14.5 percent of the total enrollment) at Spark Matsunaga Elementary School in Germantown and 227 students (12.5 percent) at Wayside Elementary School in Potomac have entered. Wayside has participated since the beginning.

And now Running USA, which five years ago started training camps for elite distance runners like Olympic marathon medalists Deena Kastor and Meb Keflezighi, has partnered with the Afterschool Alliance to launch an initiative aimed at combating childhood obesity by creating running and/or walking activities for children at thousands of afterschool programs across the nation.

Last week they announced the unique collaboration “Running Rocks: Fun and Fitness Afterschool,” which begins this fall as a pilot effort in seven cities with hopes of expanding to hundreds more next year and to thousands of communities over the next few years. The seven pilot programs are in the District and Fairfax County; Flint, Mich.; New York City; St. Louis; Richmond; Decatur, Ga.; and Bowling Green, Ohio.

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