Another Reason To Limit TV Viewing - The Health Of Your Children

It would now appear that there is yet another advantage to limiting television consumption. We've found studies suggesting that less tv leads to: a longer life, up to 9 additional years of spare time by the time you're 65, and a safer home. Now a study has come out linking limited tv watching to lower rates of childhood obesity.

In a study of 8,550 4 year old children, there were three activities strongly linked with lower rates of childhood obesity among the participants: eating an evening meal as a family 5 nights a week, getting at least 10.5 hours of sleep, and watching less than 2 hours of television per day.

The rate of childhood obesity associated with children who participated in all three of these lifestyles was 14.3%, but nearly doubled in children who experienced none of them (ie, the rate of obesity among preschoolers who ate less than 5 meals together as a family AND slept less than 10.5 hours per night AND watched more than 2 hours of tv per day was nearly 25%).

"These findings held true even when the researchers controlled for factors that may affect a child's risk of obesity, including maternal obesity, race, gender, socioeconomic status and living in a single-parent household."

"Helmcamp said it can be hard to institute some of these behaviors. But she suggested that parents 'make these behaviors a priority. Sit down and figure out how you can make it happen. Maybe your child doesn't need to be involved in four or five different activities.'"

"She said if it's tough to eat together five times a week, shoot for at least three nights a week. And, she also recommended removing TVs from children's bedrooms, which can help with limiting screen time and with getting enough sleep."

Have a great weekend. Watch less tv.

By the way, the link to the article is here:
http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthday/3homehabitshelpyoungstersstayslim.html

David Copperfield - Not The Magician

If you like long books that follow a character through their entire lives, make you ache with sadness for someone in a difficult plight, make you laugh out loud at humorous situations, and, in the end, leave you smiling, then my 6th favorite novel of all time is for you.

It's David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, and it's a doozy (interesting word history lesson for the day - “The word doozy comes from Duesenberg, an eminently desirable motor car of the 1920’s and 30’s. The Duesenberg featured a chromed radiator shell, gold-plated emblem, hinged louvered hood, stainless-steel running boards, beveled crystal lenses on the instrument panel, Wilton wool carpet, and twin bugle horns. Magazine ads for the luxury car carried the slogan: ‘It’s a Duesie.’” (The Secret Lives of Words, by Paul West).

Anyway, back to David Copperfield (the book, not the magician). Young David finds himself in a difficult situation - his father dies, and his mother's new husband is a violent man with a cruel sister. They treat him terribly and eventually arrange to send him off to boarding school. Thus begins the long tale of David Copperfield and his journey through life. Don't let the 600+ pages intimidate you - it's a super easy read. Most of Dicken's books were originally written as installments in the periodicals of his day, so the chapters are episodic and usually lead into one another in a suspenseful way.

And if you're in Lancaster and still snowed in, why not start a new book?

Falling From The Sky

By some miracle I made it back from Florida yesterday (actually, that miracle came in the form of my mother-in-law Kathy Silva helping me fly stand-by). So I'm home with the family, watching the snow pile up.

And now, just because the grass is always greener, I'm wondering about that whole sand vs. snow thing. I mean, there's got to be some reasons that sand is better than snow, right?

- if you lay out in the sand you'll usually get tan, but if you lay out in the snow you'll just turn bright red and get frostbite, which leads to black skin and eventually amputation

- sand doesn't fall from the sky - not sure why this is an advantage, but it seems like one

- when sand sits around for a few days it doesn't turn into a muddy black slush

- sand isn't slippery - this is especially good, since we throw sand on top of snow to add some traction. If sand was slippery, and we threw it on top of snow, even more people would fall over.

- according to Wikipedia (by far the most reliable internet pool of information), sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. Snow is just frozen water. Sand wins.

- sand has given us brick, concrete and glass. Snow has given us sledding and sleigh rides and snow days. Hmmm, snow days. Sand never kept us home from school . . . snow is quickly regaining the advantage . . .

Anyway, wherever you are today I hope you are enjoying yourself. Have fun in the snow (or the sand, whichever best applies to you).

Because Of Snow, Santa Is Not A Terrorist

I expected to be home from my rock star road trip yesterday, but I'm still in Florida (to read more about my trip with The Isaacs, see last week's posts). Turns out they can't land a plane in 18 inches of snow, and it takes two days to clear it all and get things moving again. So I'm sitting in a cafe in Sarasota (with a coat on - it's in the high forties) looking at palm trees.

I'd rather be home.

But I do get to spend a few extra days with my grandma here in Sarasota, which is nice, and this morning she and I had breakfast with three of her brothers and sisters, which was cool. I guess one of the great keys to life is staying flexible, and enjoying the surprise moments that fate hands you.

I was also thinking that Monday is a perfect day for lists. And since PA got so much snow, and I'm looking out at sand, I was trying to think of ways to cheer you all up. So here are some reasons that snow is better than sand:

- If you are stranded somewhere you can melt snow and drink it. If you melt sand all you get is glass

- Imagine eating a sand cone

- If you get a lot of snow in your car, it melts and eventually vanishes. If you get a lot of sand in your car, after being at the beach for example, it works its way into the carpet and the seats and then into your underwear and makes things very uncomfortable.

- Imagine skiing on sand at 30-40 mph and wiping out

- Imagine getting hit with a sandball in the face

- Frosty the Sand Man sounds more like a horror flick than a children's cartoon

- A snow storm is beautiful and coats the world in a layer of white. A sand storm strips the flesh from any living thing, fills your lungs with tiny particles and erodes metal.

- No one dreams of a sandy Christmas. Do they?

- Picture Santa living in the Sahara Desert. No longer chubby, jolly, dressed in robes and fair-skinned, he is now skin-and-bones, grouchy, dressed in rags and tan. Basically, if you exchange sand for snow, Santa becomes a terrorist.

I hope you guys in PA are enjoying the snow. Hopefully I'll be enjoying it with you soon.