On the 4th anniversary of Let’s Move!—Michelle Obama’s initiative to stamp out childhood obesity—this week, journalists and bloggers were invited to a conference call with Sam Kass, executive director of the program. Kass gave an encouraging report. For example, there has been a 43 percent decline in obesity for children ages two to five, 90 percent of schools have met new school lunch standards in less than two years, new parks are springing up in communities across the country, giving children greater access to fun physical movement.
Kass offered four key steps families can focus on to help their children create healthy lifestyles:
- Breast feed;
- Fill half of each meal’s plates with fruits and vegetables;
- Make sure kids get 60 minutes of vigorous play per day. Play, Kass stressed, is the correct word. Don’t call it exercise or working out. Make whatever activity children engage in fun. This helps set kids up for relishing physical activity as they grow older; and
- Be conscious of beverages. Water is the best thing we can drink.
It doesn’t take a health care genius—or an anti-obesity initiative—to discern that drinking water is healthier than drinking sugary sodas and fattening, toxic milk. Every healthy living and weight loss tip sheet directs drinking six to eight glasses of water daily. What made me tune Kass out, however, was not the less than groundbreaking information he presented. It was this: Healthy water is becoming harder to come by in the United States of America.
In mid-January a coal processing chemical spill in West Virginia’s Elk River left 300,000 residents without water. Communities were warned that tap water was not safe for drinking, bathing, brushing teeth. Six weeks later, residents of communities affected by the Freedom Industries (which filed for bankruptcy) spill—including its capital, Charleston—are considering fleeing the state in search of safe water.
Last week NPR ran a piece on West Virginia’s water crisis. Families in affected areas who have the means to rent temporary homes in safer communities are banding together so they have a place to go to shower and fill their water jugs with potable water. Volunteers continue dropping off gallons of water to those who can’t afford to buy their own. One woman described her six-year-old turning on the faucet to brush her teeth weeks after residents had been told by authorities their water was safe. The child began shrieking in horror at what came out out of the tap.
Have we learned nothing from Julia Roberts’ Academy Award-winning Erin Brockovitch?
Initially, when I moved to Northeast Pennsylvania, I was shocked every time I turned on my kitchen tap. The water that poured out smelled like a public swimming pool with the overpowering odor of chlorine. This natural gas rich part of the country engages in fracking, which uses chemical laden water to release the gas from the earth; water, which of course, seeps back into the ground, polluting soil, streams, rivers, everything it touches, and water has a way of touching everything. Water processing plants use chlorine to kill bacteria, but nothing kills the powerful chemicals used to frack.
There is a direct correlation between lack of access to healthy water and poverty. The poorest countries have the poorest water. Financial recovery here in Northeast Pennsylvania lags, considerably, behind the rest of the East Coast. I’m sure many factors are to blame. I’m sure toxic water plays some role. The poverty mindset, alone, creates an atmosphere of dire need, subconsciously the message is clear: we can’t even afford healthy water.
Let’s Move! is a great idea. It’s an idea that calls for infrastructural changes—better school programs, more playgrounds—to help kids get healthy. Let’s add water to that list of infrastructure upgrades that are necessary in order to create a healthy population.
For more information:
The Global Water Crisis is Hitting Close to Home
Concerned Parents Fleeing West Virginia
Fracking Causing Major Water Shortage
