Can A Person Sue His Parents For What Was Fed Him As A Child?
Picture this: 20-30 years from now, countless adults swamped in medical bills will be suffering from diet-related ailments and unhealthy lifestyle habits that were formed when they were still in their infancy or pre-school years.
These obese adults burdened by mountains of bills and feeling ostracized by their healthy peers will then band into support groups and in their frustration look for someone to point an accusing finger at- their parents. Looking for a way to lighten the medical expenses, they then press lawsuits against the ones responsible for the bad diet and lifestyle habits they formed in their youth- their parents. You know what? They might even win because given the number of junk food-eating kids these days, the judge will most likely be obese and sickly too.
Such a story may be funny, but believe it or not, it might really happen. Young adults these days have been blaming Mom and Dad for their current problems and health and dietary issues might easily include this. One thing’s for sure, the US government or the American fast food industry won’t be taking the blame for it.
Believe it or not, the diet of a lot of babies and toddlers these days are as actually as bad as those of their chip n dip munching teenage counterparts who dine mainly on fast-food. The American Dietetic Association published a recent study proving this in one of the journals.
The diet of 1/3 of the child respondents surveyed by researchers from the Tufts University School of Medicine had vegetables and fruits absent from their diet. Most of those that did have vegetables present in their diet were under the impression that French fries qualified as a vegetable.
It’s bad enough that a lot of children these days aren’t getting much exercise sitting in front of the boob tube the whole day watching cable TV, but researchers also discovered that some parents were even pouring soda into baby bottles designed for milk. Cola drinks and other types of carbonated drinks are a major cause of obesity in adults.
As can be expected, 25% of preschoolers are obese and those numbers are increasing every year. Given that eating habits are formed during the ages of 2 and 3, you can bet the statistics will get worse. Most cases of diabetes and cardiovascular disease stem from unhealthy food and lack of exercise in a person’s formative years.
Can anything be done to curb this deadly trend? Things may look bleak but as parents, we ultimately have the power to affect the way our children eat and run their future lives by setting-up proper guidelines. Becoming fit, health-conscious role models ourselves can have dramatic effects on how they eat and go about their daily activities as they grow up.
Perhaps a few decades from now, babies that have had the fortune of developing good eating habits and health lifestyles will grow up and praise their parents for playing a major role in letting them turn out to be smart, fit and wealthy adults. Wouldn’t this be a better scenario than seeing your offspring in court because the bad stuff they ate during childhood?
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