Teaching Our Children Moderation

Teaching our kids moderation might be the long-term key to lasting control of healthcare costs and healthcare reform. As an illustration just take good look at these sobering childhood obesity facts. Reigning in the overarching problems of "western diseases" such as obesity, cancers, diabetes, heart disease, etc. is effectually dependent upon educating society of the dangers of eating for pleasure and/or for sociability. Food is a means to health and yet we treat it as a means to happiness.

I know the following video can debunk that last statement because the kids are given two marshmallows but you can choose to view the following video a little differently. The marshmallow experiment is meant to show the value of teaching self-discipline. The results of this experiment with the kids in this video show a remarkable predictor of the kid's ability to adjust to society, be successful, and have self-discipline. Though the video focuses to some extent on financial literacy and delayed gratification it also demonstrates the importance of learning moderation.

Yes, yes, I know the kids who can hold out get twice the sweet treat but if you extend the illustration to real adult life you can see that people who are able to moderate and delay gratification can see the importance of bypassing the occasional food that is not good for you. They can see that they should work out a little more often so that they can reap the rewards in the future.

If anything the video of these kids is hysterical, adorable, and incredibly entertaining so if you choose to not take any lessons from it at least enjoy it from an entertainment stand point.

Have a great weekend! I won't be posting again until Monday but I do have a nice guest post lined up for tomorrow. I hope you'll check it out. I also wanted to point out that I was featured in the most recent edition of the Healthwonk Review hosted at the Health Business Blog. If you want a solid dose of healthcare related posts I encourage you to check it out. There are many great entries.