Our Next Generation Is Getting Fat (?)

In this past few month, I have been observing kids around my place. It's very easy for me to find kids wearing school uniform which walk in groups since I live in a neighborhood which is near by the kids community like elementary school, kindergarten, small masjid, and local's housing. Luckily, the elementary school itself is located behind my flat. Kid's yelling, teacher's voice, school's bell, national anthem which is sounded every Monday morning in flag ceremony, and every kind of school's noises are my daily playlist. And thankfully, I love them for they always remind me of my sweet childhood memories :)

But... What I have found from my fad observation is quite unpleasant. I have found that most of elementary students today are fat. I did't mean to say obese, but it's crystal clear that from it's appearance that most of them are overweight. Every time I see them walking in group of 4 or 5, at least 2 of them are fat. That's probably nice for some people to see and pinch kid's chubby-fluffy cheeks, but that is not a good indication actually. I am pretty sure that is also happen in another schools out there, particularly in urban area.

In a certain degree, I learn about nutrition, even not the details. What I can say about this is malnutrition, sort of imbalance of nutrition's  intake. Elementary kids are still on their growth age, so they need extra calories for double tasks: for their growth and their daily activities. But growing is not all about calories, growing needs balance intake of calories, vitamins, minerals, water, and also physical activities. What happen today with our elementary kids are excess of calories which come from full-carbo foods, lack of useful vitamins and minerals, lack of drinking pure water since it's been replaced by colored-sweet beverage and soda, and lack of physical activities.

I still remember when I was in elementary, the most favorite games are rubber-rope jumping, kasti (something like baseball), hide and seek, and bola bekel (another Indonesian traditional games using tennis ball). Even all of them are physical games that stimulate our sweat, there's no burden when we play. All we know is that we are having fun. It's so different if we compare with children today which have no more safe space to play those kind of games. Most of them are busy with supplementary course outside school and are not used to play traditional games because the new kind of game has invaded: the screen game. Starts from game-bot, play station game (PS), computer game, cell-phone game, tab-screen game, and every kind of games which only require 2 things: brain and finger.

So pity to see all that have impacted to kid's healthy. Unbalanced intake and unbalanced activities have already made the world is getting fat, day by day. Isn't it?