Getting Healthy

Did anyone see Michelle Obama on GMA this morning? What a load of crap came out of her mouth. There she was spouting rhetoric. What really got me was the following comment: "Americans need to exercise more and eat better." We are apparently too stupid to figure that out. Here are some of my suggestions regarding that.

Tell all of our happy corn growers that they need to grow corn that we can eat, not make into high fructose corn syrup. That is definitely the first thing that should come out of food. Corn in and of itself is not that bad. It isn't the best, but when you smother it in butter and salt, that doesn't make it any healthier. I will say that I enjoy mine that way. I don't eat it every day, only occasionally. But as HFCS, it is horrible for our bodies. Look at the ingredients for most foods that are on the grocery store shelves, and you will see that it is in most everything we eat.

I have another suggestion that might help. Put PE back in schools. I don't mean that mamby pamby ten minutes of moving that the state of Florida requires, I mean real PE. You remember physical education in school, right? My PE teachers were always coaches and they made us work our butts off for 45 minutes Monday through Friday. Isn't the recommendation 20 minutes a day or something like that? I know that PE would interrupt the learning process (lame excuse for cutting it) and is expensive (budget cuts being what they are, that usually gets cut right after the arts). It actually helps the learning process and helps the kids focus more.

Since they are trying to talk health care reform, how about lower premiums for those that are overweight and choose to lose the weight by being physical and eating better? Health care is so expensive today, we could all use a break. The economy isn't getting any better, wouldn't this be a good jump start? We could revolutionize the grocery suppliers and food growers into cutting the junk and helping us out.

How about incentives for food growers and suppliers that cut the amount of artificial junk that is in their products and growing organically? Don't process and refine the sugar, use it the way God made it. That is a novel idea. Quit altering the genetic make up of food to make it bigger, better, and faster. What was wrong with a beautiful red tomato that actually had flavor? I will not buy produce in the store anymore because it tastes like a cardboard box. If you look at the foods that are organic, natural, or just plain better for you, it's more expensive. It's hard for a family to eat good stuff when it's too expensive to think about buying. Making good food affordable seems pretty simple to me.

The next thing you know, they will be mandating that we all exercise and our kids, too. I dance, my kids dance, and hubby walks at least 2 miles a day while he's working. Do we really need to mandate common sense? I would love to know how that would get implemented. Neighbor reporting neighbor for not walking around the block 4 times like the law says? Not to mention that I volunteer at VBS and chase kids at our after school program at church. Who's going to decide what's exercise and what's not? They tried that when I was in high school. Marching band wasn't exercise, so we had to take a physical fitness test. Thank goodness most people passed and the state quit testing. They may still be doing it, but it's just silly.

I suggest we all take our own health into consideration the next few days. Figure out where you can improve and do it. Don't cop out, make excuses, or just put it off another day. Do something about yourself and see a positive change. Be healthy, be strong. Your changes could influence others to get healthy. Then what would they have to gripe about? Honey, don't get me started on something else today. It's too much exercise getting up and down on my soap box.