Of Mind and Body

Well. I just watched the movie 'Super Size me'. It was good but also very sad in a big way. It's about this guy who goes on a diet. A McDonalds diet. For thirty days, he eats nothing but McDonalds; if they don't sell it, he doesn't eat it. He was very healthy to begin with, but as the days progressed, he got worse, and worse, and worse. He gained like twenty pounds, was depressed, had weird physical symptoms, got addicted to the food, his liver began to pickle.... the list goes on. Just goes to show how bad fast food is.

Now me, being the person I am, was quite disgusted, but I could still devour a big mac, or any other fast food item for that matter (Taco Bell is by far the best fast food place; as anyone with any common sense knows). I mean, come on, who *didn't* know fast food was bad for you? And anyways, it's not like we ever get the stuff in the first place...

Throughout the movie, they were also taking little side-trails on food concerning health. One of the figures that saddened me greatly was this: 40% of Americans are obese. That is a large percentage. That is almost half of the entire United State population.

Another thing I noticed is that I can't think of any unhealthy homeschoolers. They all seem pretty fit to me. There are two factors that I think might contribute to this observation. While I was reading Plato's Republic, one of the things he said that was mental education should come before physical education. If you train the mind correctly, and if your mind and brain are harmonious, it seems likely that your body will also be in a harmonious, healthy state. If you are truly smart, you will take proper care of your body as well. Another thing, most homeschooling families (at least the ones I know) are larger. Like four kids and up. When you have this many kids, you tend not to eat out very often (if at all), mostly because it's expensive. A side benefit is that home-cooked meals are almost always healthier than restaurant or fast food meals (parents might also be concerned about this in the first place, and that could contribute to the eating out factor).