OPINIONS & EDITORIALS » VIEW POINT

Written by TPR News Desk, 03/03/2010

Health Over the Years

By Tabitha Dengler, Union High School Senior

The following essay was written as an assignment in the Health II class at Union High School taught by Erin Wittenberg. As part of a unit about wellness and fitness, students were asked to interview people in the 20-40, 41-60 and 65 or older age ranges, then write about what they learned about how nutrition, exercise and technology/automation has changed over the years.

Throughout all the information that I have learned during class and received from my interviews, I have come to the understanding that the people now do many activities differently than at my grandparent’s time. When I was in progress of my interviews, I was quickly noticing that my grandparents and elderly people were much more active when they were teenagers. They used to do many outdoor games like kickball, grey wolf, and hide-and-go-seek, and chores like carrying buckets of feed and water to the animals.

The older adults were never involved in substances that some of the students may have been. Another major fact that stuck out was their eating habits. They normally had meat from the animals and vegetables from the garden, rarely anything from a box. Another example was that they did a lot of walking from place to place when it was essential for them to get somewhere.

Like in class, we learned that older adults are less active but that is because now they may have more health problems causing them not to do the activities they used to do. Otherwise, the majority of the people at this age range are normally in good health condition compared to many of the people today.

Comparing when my grandparents were teenagers to today is a drastic difference! My grandparents were healthy and active, but now people are lacking in both regions. When I was interviewing a person from the 20 to 40 range, I learned that person was only active during physical education and on the farm, when needed. Otherwise people in this age range didn’t take any time to exercise on their own.

I also noticed that healthy choices weren’t as wise, such as eating junk food and not making wise decisions with substances. Like in our notes, it shows that younger people are more active then elder adults. But if you were to compare the same time frames together, then it may show that the older generations would be much more active! The majority of children today are addicted to games and technology and many of us rely on it too much.

During this assignment and this class so far, I have learned that we need to start doing something about the way of exercise, health issues, and the use of technology. I believe that our generations will get worse if we don’t change our way of living! We need to start eating more healthy food and less junk food.

One major factor that needs to change is the use of the technology, such as cell phones, internet, cars, and house appliances. These appliances are impacting the way we live our lives and it needs to change SOON! We also need to be introduced to more exercising and heart rate activities to better our health. The society is holding us down and we need to break loose of their hold on us!

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