Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Predicting the future is hard

In reading and thinking recently about the kids obesity epidemic, I remembered a filmstrip (remember those?) that I saw back in 3rd or 4th grade, which would have been around the mid 70's.

It was about nutrition, but the slant was interesting. The villian was a guy who was out to get kids to eat nothing but potatoes, and the good guy was the one pushing pizza, as a healthy food that had lots of variety.

How times have changed. Now, it's probably the rare kid who actually eats plain potatoes, that are NOT in the form of french fries. And your average kids eats pizza all the time - and way too much of it.

It just struck me that what nutritionists worried about in those days wasn't even remotely close to what the actual danger was going to be - obesity. Which makes me think about a lot of the dangers that we supposedly face now. Is what we worry about the real issue? I doubt it.

Will the REAL danger please stand up?