This comment on Diet-Blog was interesting to me:

I recently returned from Ukraine where I spent five weeks on an adoption trip. I was struck by the differences in lifestyle and incidence of overweight and obesity.

Most of the people there had, from what I could observe, a normal BMI. In the areas of Kiev and Odessa where we lived it was common to walk a lot every day.

I made a simple daily trip to the market down four flights of stairs, across a half mile of ice and snow covered ground, and back again carrying the food and water for the day. I probably walked five or six miles per day total. So did everyone else. And they walked fast! – they walked much faster on the ice than I could even on dry ground. I was routinely passed by men, women, and children.

I grew up on an island and walked everywhere, a couple miles home from school, up and down beaches, swam, did watersports, and being thin and fit never seemed like something I had to PLAN for.

Until I moved into a culture where you used a car to get EVERYWHERE…

Cities are considered dangerous, and Americans flee them into protected suburbs as ’safe’ environments to raise their children.

But is it safe to raise yet another generation of kids who eat fast food, drive everywhere, and look at it as normal? Should they struggle to plan to be fit? Be ever disconsolate about their bodies?