When I was younger, my mom never had soda in our house. She knew it was bad for us and never bought it. As I got older, I never really acquired a taste for it and still do not like it. I don’t like to drink anything carbonated and whenever I would go out to restaurants or birthday parties, I would just get water or juice. This social norm, of children drinking soda never became a norm for me. My sister also does not like soda and some of my friends that cannot live without it don’t understand how I don’t like any of the kinds that are available. I did not start realizing just how bad soda is for people until I was going into high school, when I heard people talking about how if they would stop drinking soda they would loose weight so fast. I learned that it has so many carbs and sugars in it and am so thankful that I never learned to like it.
From a young age, sugary, fatty foods are being thrown at children and they grow to believe that these foods are okay. Not understanding the basic foundation of nutrition early on can be incredibly detrimental to the health of children throughout the rest of their lives. The Healthy Eating Pyramid is a great way to show children which foods are most important as well as show them which foods, such as soda, do not even make it on the food pyramid because they should not be eating them at all. The statistic that today out of the 7 billion people, 1 billion of them are starving and 500 million are obese. Obesity is a rising epidemic and people need to be more educated on not only healthy eating habits, but healthy lifestyle choices. The social norms of children eating terrible foods “just because they are children” is wrong and needs to change. Parents cannot continue to feed their children sugars and fats in place of vegetables and meats that they need to be healthy individuals.
Hello Jacqueline. Great post! I was always raised by a different philosophy that depriving a child from something only makes that desire greater when they can finally have it. Obviously this is not the case for everyone. I was allowed to have sweets and sugary foods growing up, not all the time but every now and then. Today, I’m really not big into candies or sodas. I certainly see your point though and agree 100% that it is not right to only feed a child sweets because parents are too afraid to tell their kids no. This seems to be a trending issue lately with children being brought up.
If interested, here is a link to post.
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/food-choice-and-social-norms-8/
Hi Jacqueline, my name is Shoheb. I want to say great work on all parts of this assignment. I really liked how in the first paragraph you mentioned a social norm that you didn’t become a victim of, and good for you I might add. From your second paragraph, I really do agree with you that parents need to be more aware of what they’re feeding their children as obesity is a clear problem in our country today. The diagram simple and to the point so it was easy to understand. Keep up the great work!
Here is the link to my entry.
http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/04/mod-6/