Nutrition education should be prioritized in schools

Nutrition is a topic that is often overlooked by most people – they don’t think too hard about what they’re eating and how it makes them feel. They simply do it, and it works out. However, not everybody is the same, and some people aren’t as lucky. Some have parents who don’t limit them, some have parents who over-limit them, and some have nobody.

Most people don’t know what it’s like to get glared at with every bite they take. Most people don’t know what it’s like to be called fat in front of everyone at the dinner table, and most people don’t know what it’s like to look in the mirror and realize that they’re right.

According to the CDC, 43% of people with depression are obese. For most of my life I was a part of that figure. I was miserable, unathletic, and lacked energy all the time, so I decided to make a change. But I still didn’t know what I was doing or how to eat, so I didn’t. I skipped meals, I went to bed hungry all the time, and when the scale jumped up even a pound I would stress for hours even though it was probably just water weight.  But I didn’t know that. I completely gave up bread thinking that carbs were bad, not knowing that they’re a vital source of energy.

This made me think, how many other people has this happened to? How many other people can’t look at themselves? How many people can’t find the strength to improve. How many people have been misled, and how many are still struggling? It turns out, a lot.

Obesity is a big problem throughout the country. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), 42.3% of adults and 20% of children in America are obese. This is a massive problem because obesity can cause cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

Eating disorders are also very prevalent in the country. According to the Eating Recovery Center, 9% of Americans go through disordered eating in their lifetime. Whether it’s over or under-eating, these disorders are extremely dangerous and kill more than 10,000 people a year.

When a kid attempts to change their eating habits, the first approach is usually to talk to a parent. Our parents have grown up through all of the fad diets imaginable. If you asked a parent how to lose weight, especially an American parent, they would probably recommend one of the many fad diets like the keto diet, the paleo diet, or worst of all, the low and n0 fat diets. These poor recommendations are given because our parents were also not taught about proper nutrition.

I propose that proper nutrition should be taught in a mandatory class in elementary, middle, and high school so that the knowledge stays with us and further climbing of disordered eating is ceased. Things like calories or  nutrients and how they work are topics that should be instilled in the minds of everyone. One unit, one time in middle school, or even high school, is not enough to make a true difference in someone’s mind.

Many health related issues could be prevented in the future if children were just taught about nutrition, weight gain, and exercise – not the useless posters in the lunchroom about a proper plate. I mean real, mandatory classes from an early age so that nobody else has to go through this.