On CNN today--

It is so sad to see items that I have just viewed on CNN today. The sight of a twelve year old being so vastly overweight and the affect it is going have on his health; not in the distant future, but now, is mind-boggling.  The list of foods this kid eats and the quantities make my intake look like a diet. I have taken the piss out myself in my ‘Fat Bugger’ blogs, but all joking aside, the fact remains that we are killing our kids. We are cutting decades off our kids’ lives and I include NZ in that claim too.

I feel angry and would it not be unfair of me to claim that overfeeding our kids with the rubbish they demand is nothing short of ‘child abuse?’ The diabetes, asthma and many other afflictions are conditions that we should not be seeing until later adulthood---- not in the childhood and teen years.

What is it going to take, to reverse this trend? Is this the first generation of children who are not going to live as long as their parents or grandparents? Even with new medical techniques and drugs, we are not going to be able to turn these figures around, without major changes in the way we all see food. Coming from me, this all may sound a bit rich, but look again at my blogs and at what stage in my life I am writing them. My doctor once told me that his first aim was to get me to an age, whereby I will be able to collect a pension or superannuation as we call it in NZ. Well he has nearly got me there because that age for me will be 65. (They are gradually raising that age until it hits the late 60’s. That should occur in about 20 years.

I hate to say this, but unless things change dramatically, many of today’s kids and teenagers are not going to make that age. Will the Government of the day be happy about the savings they will make in the budget? That is very cynical of me, but I think you know what is driving my ramblings---- my shock at seeing day after day, the issue described above.