sorb and assimilate what little nutrients are present. This is energetically draining for the body which can cause accelerat- ed aging, obesity and chronic dis-ease. In addition, consuming nutrient poor foods creates a cycle of constant craving as the body is always searching to meet its nutritional needs. Technology, though amazing, is also
taking a toll on the health of our chil- dren by bringing them inside the home to sit and watch hours of television and to play video games. This inactivity com- bined with high calorie/low nutrition di- ets is a major contributor to the expand- ing waistlines of our children. Children in America watch on aver-
age more than twenty two hours of tele- vision per week. That is more than three hours per day. Television, though relax- ing, is a brain drain. There is no interac- tion, just passive watching and listening and other than the history channel and occasional nature show there is little ed- ucational value to be gained. Instead, our children by the age of eleven will have witnessed approximately eight thousand murders and by the age of eighteen will have seen about two hundred thousand acts of violence. Not only are our chil- dren becoming fat from hours of TV and video games but one can only imagine the psychological and emotional toll of witnessing such violence. Sitting in front of the television and
eating a meal is commonplace. Sitting down at the kitchen or dining room ta- ble with a home cooked meal and family dinner conversation has become obso- lete. Parents and children spend on av- erage three and a half minutes per week in meaningful conversation. In compari- son, children spend one thousand six hundred and eighty minutes per week in front of the television. That is greater than five hundred times more time spent watching television rather than convers- ing with family. This helps to explain the state of emotional and physical unwell- being of our children. Technology has also brought us en-
vironmental toxins as postwar chemicals came into agriculture creating many jobs and increasing farm yields. Unfortunate- ly, increased productivity in farming has its downside. The production and use of chemicals has skyrocketed in the past 50 years and our exposure to this chemical soup has become virtually unavoidable. Plastics, cleaning products, personal care products are a few of the offenders
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worth mentioning here. These manmade products enter the body via the skin, lungs or digestive system and many are categorized as xeno-estrogens. Xeno means foreign. These manmade estro- gens act like estrogen in the body and as a result can increase body fat causing obesity, depression and anxiety, contrib- ute to insomnia and fatigue and also in- crease one’s risk of developing cancer. Technology, then, plays multiple roles in the obesity plague stalking our youth. Genes are what ultimately predis-
pose us to the development of dis-ease including obesity. If one parent is obese, a child has a fifty percent chance of be-
ing obese. If both parents are obese, a child has an eighty five percent chance of becoming obese. These are not great odds but we do have control over our genetic destiny by the way we live our lives. Everything we do from the air we breathe to the food we eat influences how our genes are expressed. We de- cide. We can be fat or we can be thin. We have the power. We can no longer blame our genes as it is the environment in which our genes live that determines how they are expressed. But genes are only part of the problem; eating habits which are learned in the home environ- ment play a very important role. Bing-
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