Literacy in Personal Health Education

While schools teach a relatively varied curriculum of studies for their pupils, few teach some of the most important things that young people need to know for enjoying a full and prosperous life once they leave that institution. These include personal health education to the degree of understanding how much nutrition and diet as well as exercise and activity will affect their lives as they get older.

This is a shame, especially as we are seeing a trend toward weight gain in huge numbers along with more and more cases of diet related medical conditions affecting an ever younger demographic of the population. It would seem a most sensible path to take for those responsible for educating our children to ensure they are taught in sufficient detail what is probably the most important aspect of their very existence.

Understanding Health

The results of this lack in education are apparent in the way that society appears to be eating itself into ill health and obesity. People are doing this without realizing what is even happening inside their bodies in reaction to the poor diets they are unwittingly consuming.

The old values of a family unit have been eroded to such an extent that families rarely take meals together regularly as they once did. This has created a situation where individual members of the family are quite happy to “grab something quick” to eat and this becomes their normal mode of eating.

So many people’s staple diet consists of sandwiches, microwaved ready meals, takeaway food and cheap meals in fast food restaurants all washed down with copious volumes of fizzy soft drinks that are loaded with sugar. It’s no wonder so many people are gaining weight and becoming a part of the obesity statistics.

What Are the Solutions?

Of course it is simply not possible to turn back the clock and return to the ways of five decades or so ago. The current trend for eating and drinking will only continue and gradually become worse through simple ignorance of the facts about nutrition and how diet affects the body and ultimately a person’s health.

One way of cushioning this potentially deadly blow for societies that are most affected by this shift in lifestyle is to educate people while they are still young. Instilling a sense of family values, eating together at meal times and eating wholesome meals made from fresh ingredients and not processed foods would be a step in the right direction.

If only it were possible that the main meal of the day consisting of a wholesome home cooked meal was to replace a meal consisting of processed junk. The population as a whole would reduce its physical growth in inches and start on the road to a healthier way of life.

Other smaller changes would follow as more people become truly aware of the importance of eating healthily. It would promote a better personal health image that people would have of themselves and that they could carry throughout their lives which can only be a great benefit to individuals as well as to whole societies.