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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Why are our kids fat and unfit?

by

20131211

It's like­ly the world did not need an of­fi­cial, sci­en­tif­ic study to tell us the fit­ness lev­el of chil­dren may be de­clin­ing.

In a re­cent study of glob­al fit­ness done by the Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion, re­searchers analysed da­ta span­ning 46 years on over 25 mil­lion chil­dren in 28 coun­tries–and the re­sults were hard­ly sur­pris­ing. On av­er­age, chil­dren be­tween nine and 17 can­not run as fast as their par­ents could when they were young. In fact, the study es­ti­mat­ed chil­dren to­day run a mile a minute and a half slow­er than their par­ents did.

Suf­fice it to say car­dio­vas­cu­lar en­durance has dwin­dled over the years. This means surg­ing child­hood obe­si­ty and se­ri­ous health im­pli­ca­tions, which will sure­ly fol­low.

Pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr David Bratt said T&T was def­i­nite­ly in­clud­ed in that glob­al trend, and from his clin­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence over the past 36 years, chil­dren in T&T were get­ting fat­ter and more un­fit at a younger age. He said some­thing as sim­ple as traf­fic con­tributed to the mul­ti-faceted prob­lem.

"That's one rea­son chil­dren are not out­side play­ing," he said. "There is no time for play­ing."

He ex­plained fam­i­lies have to wake up ear­li­er to avoid traf­fic in or­der to get to school and work on time, and then face the same daunt­ing prob­lem on the way home at the end of the day. This is a small part of the big­ger pic­ture and the rea­son for this surge in child obe­si­ty–a change in lifestyle.

Chair­man of the Port-of-Spain and En­vi­rons Sports Coun­cil Kelvin Nan­coo agreed.

"When we were young­sters grow­ing up, we played sports, all types of sports. Every day...We would play crick­et, foot­ball, do track and field, pitch mar­bles...chil­dren were al­ways mov­ing," he lament­ed. He said that type of con­stant move­ment and ac­tiv­i­ty was fun­da­men­tal.

"Now chil­dren just sit and ex­er­cise their fin­gers. That has brought on obe­si­ty in chil­dren."

In the long run, Bratt said, so­ci­ety will pay by hav­ing to ad­dress the up­surge in di­a­betes, heart dis­ease and can­cer.

"It's a huge prob­lem, and it's go­ing to cost us. It's al­ready cost­ing us."

The part school plays

When asked what else was to blame, apart from the pro­lif­er­a­tion of video games, Nan­coo fault­ed high ex­pec­ta­tions from school.

Na­coo, who is al­so the prin­ci­pal of St Michael's School for Boys, said the cur­ricu­lum, teach­ers and par­ents have added to the pres­sure stu­dents face when it comes to aca­d­e­mics. He said from the days of Com­mon En­trance to the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), stu­dents have had to face a more rig­or­ous and stress­ful work­load, with less time to de­vote to phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

"When you ap­ply more pres­sure on chil­dren, when you give them more sub­ject ar­eas to cov­er, you are do­ing them an in­jus­tice...

Par­ents take away ac­tiv­i­ties so their chil­dren could go to ex­tra lessons. That is a mis­take. It's cru­el to our chil­dren.

"But they (par­ents) on­ly see 'pass­ing for a big school.'"

He said the em­pha­sis was no longer on the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren, but rather be­ing top of the class, in a pres­tige school, no mat­ter the cost.

"Many, many schools do not have good PE (phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion) pro­grammes, nor do they take part in sports."

PE in sec­ondary schools is one of eight core sub­jects, ac­cord­ing to a source at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

"It is com­pul­so­ry for all stu­dents to do at least two pe­ri­ods a week."

She said while PE class­es may be ad­e­quate to main­tain a child's fit­ness lev­el, poor ex­er­cise and eat­ing habits at home could coun­ter­act the ef­fects.

Naresh Bho­la, PE teacher at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do agreed. He said there wasn't any need for more PE class­es, as stu­dents need­ed to ex­er­cise and eat prop­er­ly on their own.

"It's a lifestyle. I could have them do­ing 100 jump­ing jacks–but if they go home and eat rub­bish and do noth­ing for the rest of the week, there's no point."

What par­ents can do

An­oth­er way life has changed is that par­ents have be­come busier. Con­sumed with bal­anc­ing work, chil­dren and traf­fic. It's eas­i­er, quick­er and cheap­er for a work­ing mom to buy fast food for her fam­i­ly, af­ter work­ing all day and en­dur­ing a long com­mute.

Sure, it's eas­i­er, but Nan­coo said this is not an ex­cuse.

"You're too busy to pre­pare a meal? No. You make the time for your child."

Bho­la agreed, say­ing par­ents need­ed to step up and take con­trol of their di­et and ex­er­cise to set a bet­ter ex­am­ple for their chil­dren.

Bho­la said par­ents have de­scribed the chal­lenge of break­ing the seden­tary cy­cle their chil­dren are ac­cus­tomed to.

"It gives a child more plea­sure to play video games rather than ex­er­cise," Bho­la said.

How­ev­er, what made the dif­fer­ence Bratt said, was in­still­ing a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude to phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty from an ear­ly age.

Try­ing to get a lazy ten-year-old out of the house will be a chal­lenge if he's not ac­cus­tomed to it, Bratt said.

"You have to start ear­ly, you can­not start when they're ten. They al­ready have a (taste) for TV by then."

MORE IN­FO

While there are sup­posed to be PE ses­sions in pri­ma­ry schools, there is one "gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er" for each class, who may not have a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in PE.

A source at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion who works on the cur­ricu­lum and wished to re­main anony­mous, told the T&T Guardian the en­tire pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum was re­cent­ly re­viewed, and teach­ers at that lev­el would be get­ting more sup­port to help de­liv­er the cur­ricu­lum "across all sub­jects."

With re­spect to PE, there will be work­shops with­in school dis­tricts to train teach­ers on how to ef­fec­tive­ly in­struct PE to their stu­dents, with a fo­cus on prac­ti­cal ex­er­cis­es.


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