I sometimes wonder why we need so many school buses to take kids to school and so many cars parked at train stations.
It would be nice instead to see more children cycle to school and more people parking cycles at the train or bus stations. Pity that much of America was not built to cater to such a proposition. We are screaming that almost fifty percent of the population is overweight, including school children of course. Former President Clinton is leading the charge about child obesity admitting that once upon a time he was a fat boy and First Lady Laura Bush is also showing a great interest in forging new guidelines from the Education Department school nutrition program and is is taking a national interest in action for healthy kids. One way to get children and adults moving is to walk or cycle to work or school in combination with other means of public transport if necessary. I would wish that states across the nation would issue instructions on Active Travel just like what the Scottish are trying to do. As developing countries become economically successful the people grow fatter too, showing off a clear correlation between economic prosperity and the bulge of flesh.
The federal government and state governments may wish to have a long-term plan to encourage children and adults to walk and bike as a means of transport when it is physically a reasonable thing to do, considering distance, climate and available infrastructure. In the long run, the government may want to make modifications to infrastructure so that folks can walk and bike as it is popularized in most of Europe. We need initiatives on transport alternatives. In addition of course, by walking and cycling we can reduce our dependence on oil and stay healthy and also strenghten our national security too.
Of course, good health calls for a complex environmental infrastructure as well, but good nutrition and exercise are within immediate control of people. On the one hand, it is hard to see so many people go hungry in developing countries and food gone to waste in the industrialized world. If folks in the richer countries eat less and give part of their food to the developing countries, they would be healthier and may solve some of the starvation problems facing the so called third-world countries. Perhaps, the World Food Program (WFP) may want to create such a scheme, donating money from savings on food intake from rich to poor both within countries and without.
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