It used to be that rural kids were generally healthier than urban children, because they had a more active lifestyle, as well as being exposed to more germs when young, which built their immune system. However, while it doesn't shape up well for many of the kids in Finland, there is now a growing discrepancy in physical health, favouring urban children. They have put this down to "distance" where kids in urban areas have more possibility to be part of sporting teams and activity in general, because they can rely on walking or public transport, that the country kids can't.
In rural areas, for example, about 42 percent of fifth graders and 46 percent of eighth graders have low physical functional capacity. By contrast, those proportions are much lower in urban municipalities, 33 and 38 percent respectively.
None of those numbers are good, are they?
Firstly, while it could be that it comes down to transport possibility, I think what it indicates is how life has changed, where activity in general has become more homogenised, no matter where you live. There is no longer a huge difference in activity type between urban and rural areas for children, since most rural kids no longer do any of the farm work they would have done earlier. Instead, other than the distances, their lives resemble the urban kids, with lots of screens and sedentary living.
Now, physical condition doesn't only come down to weight, but by the time the average Finn reaches "young adult" (under 30) status, over one-third of women and just under one-half of men are considered overweight, and 19% of women and 17% of men are considered obese. For those over 30, 63% of women and 72% of men are at least overweight. 28% of women and 26% of men are obese. Almost one in two men and women have abdominal obesity.
For those over thirty, they weren't raised on screens in quite the same way as the kids of today, but they were there for the explosion of ultra-processed foods that has come into the Finnish food-chain in the last thirty years. Even when I came here over twenty years ago, there wasn't that much convenient food in stores, but now, most of a supermarket is pre-cooked food, with massive confectionary sections. When the confectionary section is twice the size of the fruit and veg section, there is a problem.
For the kids tested recently, there has been some improvement since Covid restrictions made an impact, but the trend goes back far further than Covid, so that is no excuse. Covid was an accelerant for degrading wellbeing further, not the cause.
Kids are just not moving as much as they did and when I watch my daughter's friends play in the yard, I notice that they are far less capable than we were at the same age. Most of the people I knew at that age were not only not overweight, but they were active at school, after school, and weekends. School breaks were filled with various sports, kicking and hitting balls in groups or against walls, which impacts not only on the weight area, but also physical dexterity. And I think this plays an additional role in other activities.
If a child feels that they are okay at something, they are more likely to do more of it. But if they feel they are bad at something, or it is uncomfortable, they are likely to do less of it. Without dexterity, movement whether it be sport or in the playground becomes more uncomfortable. Put additional weight on the table and it becomes even more uncomfortable. At some point, being out of shape becomes a self-feeding spiral downward, where the less we move, the less we will move, because movement feels increasingly bad. To spiral the other way takes a huge amount of effort, and most people just won't do it (Nike slogan for Gen-Z?), because they do not have the willpower or even the want.
Physical ability is something children take for granted, because they don't yet know what it is like to lose those abilities. As young adults, we can feel pretty good despite not living an overly healthy lifestyle, because our body is able to absorb abuse still. But as we get a little older, all those past transgressions catch up fast and the impact on our body and subsequently our mind, can be rapid. And we have tied our identity largely to the things we have been able to do, and they get lost, quickly. For some, like in my case, instantly.
To each their own?
Sure, perhaps adults should be making their own decisions and be responsible for their own outcomes. However, what about when adults are making decisions for children that are going to heavily affect the potential of that child as an adult? Is that okay? If a parent isn't allowed to legally smack a child due to the trauma it can cause, why is the same parent allowed to feed their kid poor quality food and have their child sit inside on screens all evening? While not an acute impact, doesn't that become part of a traumatic adulthood experience also?
Trauma refers to a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that overwhelms a person's ability to cope, leading to lasting negative effects on their mind, emotions, and body.
Overwhelm's a person's ability to cope....
Coping is more than just surviving, especially if we are looking at improving our wellbeing. Coping means being able to navigate our environment successfully, to survive when times are hard, and thrive when they are good. But if our physical condition is increasingly degrading, our ability to deal with what we face decreases also, making everything we do and experience harder to negotiate, reducing our potential, our possibility, and lowering our outcomes.
It creates another self-feeding, downward spiral, that impacts on our entire life.
And we are baking the conditions for it directly into our children, because we are encouraging more sedentary, less nutritious living standards across the board in the name of profits. It is all about business, with advertisers targeting children and parents alike to drive the sales and usage of products and services that make us worse off as individuals, and societies.
We can do all the studies, have all the reports, no all the statistics, but what is actually being done about improving the conditions for our kids and of our kids, so that they can go into adulthood best foot forward? Parents are to blame in many respects, but they have been conditioned too. Governments and corporations are to blame also, because they have incentivised the pathway to ill-health to create wealth for a few, but they have no impetus to change it. Healthy people might generate more wealth as an individual, but masses of unhealthy consumers generate more wealth collectively - across all industries.
All I can do is encourage my daughter to be one of the outliers. A person who is physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy as an adult. But it starts in childhood.
Taraz
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