Are you feeding your kids right?

We all know obe­sity is a mas­sive issue in West­ern soci­eties. Yet many of us con­tinue to feed our faces with con­ve­nience foods and do the same to our children.

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize this year was awarded because of his work, par­tic­u­larly with chil­dren, to pre­vent child­hood obe­sity, which has sig­nif­i­cant long term impli­ca­tions for over­all pub­lic health, as well as the health and well­be­ing of the indi­vid­u­als affected. Watch the video of Jamie’s TED Prize talk below to see just how much harm is being caused.

Have you ever paused to think what that’s doing to you and your kids?

Jamie Oliver’s work is already see­ing pos­i­tive out­comes for the chil­dren he’s helped by trans­form­ing the way their school lunches are pre­pared. Just days ago, The Guardian pub­lished a piece enti­tled Jamie Oliver’s school din­ners shown to have improved aca­d­e­mic results report­ing some of the sin­gual­rly astound­ing out­comes kids in the UK have seen as a result of his ear­lier work that is now being taken to the USA:

• absences due to ill­ness down 15%
• the pro­por­tion of stu­dents who got level 4 in their Eng­lish SATs at key stage 2 increased by 4.5 per­cent­age points
• the per­cent­age who got level 5 in sci­ence was up 6 per­cent­age points

In no small way, we could do with sim­i­lar nutri­tion edu­ca­tion and out­comes here in Aus­tralia. Though there are far fewer schools serv­ing daily lunches to their chil­dren, school tuck­shops are still, in many cases, serv­ing up fast food that is high in fat and low in nutri­tional value.As par­ents, we should be plac­ing strong pres­sure on our schools to ensure that junk food is not on the menu and treats, which we all love, are avail­able in sen­si­ble portions.

Now that would be an Edu­ca­tion Rev­o­lu­tion!