Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Killing us with personal responsibility

Most Canadians know the dangers of consuming too much salt. But how many hands shoot forward at your dinner table in search of the salt shaker?

I've never been a big salt guy. I trace it back to my childhood when a friend of mine used to always lick salt he'd picked up off the road in the wintertime. I wasn't yet 10 years old but even then I knew what he was doing couldn't be good for you.

So when I sat down to watch The Great Salt Shakedown last week on Marketplace I didn't think I'd be one of the regular Canadians overloading on salt. I was wrong.

Host Tom Harrington gave 80 Canadians containers to urinate into for one day. These people ranged in age from teenage hockey players, school kids, a senior's swimming club and other middle-aged Canadians. At the end of the day all the containers were collected to measure the amount of sodium each individual had consumed. The results were startling.

The daily maximum amount of salt you should have in your diet per day is 2,300 mg. Almost everyone tested was far higher than 2,300 mg. One of the teenage hockey players registered an astonishing 7,000 mg of sodium in a day. He attributed it to some Chicken McNuggets and pizza he'd consumed.

So how come the majority of these people tested registered high levels of sodium? It's in the food they eat. And it's not just the boxed processed foods that are high in sodium -- it's practically everything.

A number of years ago Health Canada went after food manufacturers to reduce the amount of trans fats they put into their products. Similar legislation was passed in the U.S.A. But no such rules were enacted concerning sodium which plays just as much a role, if not more in heart and stroke.

Mr. Harrington attempted to get an interview with our Health Minister Aglukkaq to pepper her with his sodium questions but she refused. Instead her Parliamentary Assistant Colin Carrie stood in her place. I took note because he's also my MP. When Mr. Carrie wasn't looking like a deer caught in the headlights he said his government believes it's a personal responsibility to limit your intake of salt.

The next morning I went grocery shopping to exercise my personal responsibility. I spent twice as much time shopping because I looked at every label and couldn't believe how much sodium is in everything outside the produce aisle. In order to consume under 2,300 mg of sodium per day you practically have to starve yourself! Don't believe me? Take the test using Marketplace's sodium calculator. It's not an exact science like the lab tests on the show were but it will give you a ballpark figure. Visit http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/sodium-calculator/index.html I took the test and my sodium count was 2,501 for a day. Scary.

Health Canada has raised a red flag over the amount of sodium in each and everyone of our diets but nobody on Parliament Hill is listening. If we keep this up you can count on the number of heart and stroke deaths to spike, especially among Boomers.

I understand that salt enhances the taste of food but I'd trade a bit of taste for a longer life any day. It's difficult to exercise personal responsibility when food manufacturers are allowed to pile sodium into everything (Even orange juice has sodium in it!). We wouldn't want to inconvenience big business would we? Put the blame on the consumer, how convenient.

I don't add salt to anything and as I found out from watching Marketplace I don't have to. Food manufacturers are doing that for us.

 

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Hollywood in the classroom

 I love to watch a good movie. And if I can get out of the house with my wife and watch it at an actual movie theatre even better. If not, watching a flick at home is also an enjoyable experience. 

My children are no different than me when it comes to movies. Their cinematic tastes clash with my own most times but the other weekend we watched a teenage show that wreaked of the 1980s -- The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It was 90 minutes well spent and it provided another opportunity for me to reflect upon my youth.

It's nice to sit down and enjoy a movie. But there's a time and a place for enjoying these things and those times shouldn't be between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday during the school year. You may be asking yourselves, "Movies at school? Who watches movies at school?" To that I only have one answer -- your kids if indeed you have kids. Hollywood has taken over the classrooms in Durham Region.

I recall viewing ancient documentary films in grade school during history classes. No big name actors in those films, no special effects. Just dull, historical material that complemented the course curriculum we were studying.

These days DVDs are played in the classrooms for pure entertainment in my kids' classes. Last spring the students in the primary and junior grades actually went to the movie theatre to watch Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. The senior students saw The Hunger Games. I asked my kids if they were studying anything remotely associated with either of those movies. They weren't.

Apparently many schools got special deals to view these highly anticipated movies. So learning was out, entertainment was in. Hollywood 1, Education 0.

I thought once my eldest daughter Rebekah got to high school the movies would end. Not so. Two weeks ago she got to view the movie Top Gun in french class. No, it wasn't the french version!

Since September she has viewed in class the movies Babe, 1408, The Day After Tomorrow, Emperor's New Groove (a movie my 6 year old would enjoy), Babar, Mean Girls. Only one movie had any educational value and that was a documentary on water played in geography class. It's also the only movie Rebekah couldn't remember the title of, great!

Rebekah is in the academic stream, what in my day was called 'advanced'. If the course curriculum allows students the time to view this many movies in a semester and a half there's a problem.

My wife Heather called Rebekah's school to ask the principal what's going on? So far he hasn't returned her call. It will be interesting to hear his response.

The goal of all educators should be to educate our students and prepare them for their futures. Teach them, talk to them, question them, engage them. Don't pop in a DVD and ignore them. Viewing this many Hollywood movies during class times tells me the system is failing our kids, at least the system here in Durham Region.

There should be a ban on viewing movies in the classroom unless it has something, anything to do with what students are studying. If not, keep Hollywood out of our classrooms.