Student Obesity: Medical Crisis or secondary issue?

By Sammy "Coach" Goldberg

A New Era in Health and Sports Education

This is the situation at hand regarding our current student obesity epidemic. To date, both the county and local school boards have admittedly found themselves in the midst of a medical epidemic they cannot cope with. While they offer no effective antidote to halt the rising tide of student obesity, they have constructed a critique of the problem, which shifts major responsibility for the rise in their student's obesity, from the school's regiment onto
1. Parents,
2. The business community,
3. The kids themselves and
4. Sacramento

While school administrators ultimately blame parents for their student's obesity, and teachers blame Sacramento, parents who are admitted non-experts on the subject have historically trusted and deferred to schools, feeling their responsibility is not to initiate but to support curriculum while students are at home. Thus, when it comes to an admittedly failed school initiated program, particularly one in which parents have had no previous voice, that program's administrators and not parents must take responsibility for its failure.

While parents may not know exactly how and why, a full disclosure of currently available evidence will show they would be right to argue schools and not parents, are the major practical source for the increase in obesity of their students, and here's why:

Dr. Mehl has admitted the failing obesity regiment all San Mateo students must participate in, regardless of weight, has for several years been routinely approved without review by himself, the County Board Of Education or any of our local school boards including SMUHSD.

Dr. Mehl's decision, and the deference of the local school boards to continue to implement the current antidote to student obesity, that is, to continue to utilize an admittedly failing fat loss theory and physical practice, which neither he, the county nor your local school board administrators have reviewed, see the need to review, or even understand would seem unacceptable.

Most importantly, Dr.Mehl's failure to support efforts to bring these issues before parents and students after being supplied with an abundance of good evidence, showing his currently approved fat loss exercise regiment is not only ineffective but harmful to his obese students, as well as the correct alternative indicated by the data, stressed the need for a for a parent's and teacher's

"Emergency Student Obesity Summit, scheduled for Nov 1, 2005. See http://www.fatlossnewsradio.org for more

This resistance to entraining a review of the County Board's current procedures affecting obese students or seeking a viable alternative, particularly when both requests are supported by an abundance of corroborative evidence is for the parents of obese kids their No.1 obstacle to affecting the current obesity epidemic.

Why be a Candidate?

In 2004, as a candidate for the SMC Board of Education, 28,000 plus parents and concerned citizens voted for my curriculum-content based platform to ensure the future health of our students by effectively countering student obesity and the use of PED's in San Mateo's schools. These Parents have shown me they want my kind of approach.