All three of us in this thread are the same age (within a few months). I don't know about you gents, but we had chocolate milk and snack foods in our grade school cafeterias, but such a small percentage of our classmates were overweight compared with the numbers today.
I'm convinced there's more to it, and I think it involves a lot more of what happens outside of school. We had video games, but Atari got old after a while, and I remember spending a lot of time outside riding bikes and shooting BB guns in the woods behind my house.
I noticed at our last family gathering that all of the kids at one point weren't even playing with each other, but were slouched on the sofa and floor tapping on their parents' tablets and phones. And, I know for a fact that my cousin's littlest two spend literally hours doing the same thing every day - even when it's nice outside.
When we go camping at the lake, it's the same thing! They're up in the damn tent in the middle of the day watching DVD's.
I agree, but i didn't have access to any snacks until 6th grade here in Texas.
I think it has more to do with the sedentary lifestyle kids have today, when i was little all i did was play outside and my parents limited my TV time to 1 hour a day max, even on the weekends. We rode bikes, played sports and just spent time in the backyard building forts and climbing trees. I almost never hear of kids doing this today unless they live out in the country.
We did have chocolate milk and that's all i drank throughout grade school, so i agree with what you are saying, however i feel that limiting the access young children have to foods they don't know any better to eat might be a good idea. However if the parents never teach the kids to stay away from junk, they are just going to eat it at home anyway so it's useless.
I was at a family event a few weeks ago and the weather was perfect outside, yet every single kid was watching a tablet or playing a hand held video game.
I couldn't imagine camping with video games, we used to go all the time and it was the most fun we had all year running through the woods and riding bikes. It's crazy how much things have changed in the last 20-30 years.