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Shasta YMCA is maintaining healthy ambition
Our view: The region's youth and adults alike will benefit from an expansion.
Blame busy parents, video games, high-fructose corn syrup or suburban sprawl. Whatever the reason, children have grown distinctly pudgier over the past generation.
The obesity rate for teenagers has more than doubled since the 1970s. Among grade-schoolers, the rate has jumped nearly fourfold.
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And while recent figures show the grim trend has topped out in recent years, that high plateau is hardly a healthy place to rest. Increasingly, doctors are detecting obesity-related illness - diabetes, high-blood pressure - in children where the diseases were once unheard of. And few of us grow thinner and healthier as we age.
Opportunities for a physically fit start in life are more vital than ever. And that makes the Shasta Family YMCA's newly announced vision to expand beyond its downtown center a matter of much more than saving gym rats or their parents a few minutes' commute time.
The Redding Y's growth-minded new director, Al Boren, says he wants to explore building an east-side branch and a center at Whiskeytown Lake in partnership with the recreation area.
While it's exploring, the YMCA ought to look north and south as well. Redding has grown eastward, to be sure, but the unmet demand could be larger in Shasta Lake and the south county.
Giving kids, especially from needier families, more chances to get involved in healthy athletic activities is good for their waistlines and their characters, but it's also good for society. What are they doing if they're not at a basketball game?
It's good to see the Y maintain its ambitious streak under new leadership. And an expansion, while it won't happen in a day, is the kind of thing that can get the community genuinely pumped up.
Posted by gamerjohn on October 4, 2008 at 11:47 a.m.
Blame everything else but don't blame the schools for dropping PE classes because of budget cuts from Prop 13. Don't blame parents driving their kids to school because of all the molesters and perverts running loose.
Posted by katiethomashoerber on October 4, 2008 at 7:14 p.m.
Don't blame high fructose corn syrup either. I don't know why it gets a bad rap. Geez.
Posted by Zebrareader on October 4, 2008 at 10:01 p.m.
My mother tells me that when she was young here in Redding, everyone used to walk everywhere. In the evenings whole families used to walk in the evening and say hello to each other. Now when I sit on my porch I never see anyone walking anywhere and see kids only going to and from school and my neighborhood is full of kids. Cars race back and forth up and down my street which is good that they are empty, I guess.
Not too long ago, my mother tried to join the YMCA but she said it was too expensive as she is retired. She tried to get her grandchildren, my brother's kids into that place too but it was too expensive for her to pay and their parents are on Social Security Disability and Disabled Veterans Pension. I got the distinct impression that no one at the YMCA wanted the poorer kids there but only the middle class kids.
I hope things have changed at the YMCA, but I haven't heard that they have. I would rather bike on my own than go down there so I don't have that problem. There is a way that one can work off the membership fees, but no one contacted my mother nor my brother and his wife until six months after they applied. As I said I hope things have changed.
Posted by Cornrefiner on October 6, 2008 at 1:02 p.m.
High fructose corn syrup, sugar, and several fruit juices are all nutritionally the same.
High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as sugar and is handled similarly by the body.
The American Medical Association in June 2008 helped put to rest misunderstandings about this sweetener and obesity, stating that “high fructose corn syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners.”
Consumers can see the latest research and learn more about high fructose corn syrup at www.HFCSfacts.com and www.SweetSurprise.com.
Audrae Erickson
President
Corn Refiners Association
(Requires free registration.)
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