OBESITY
Adults, schools feed bad dietary habits to kids
As a primary care pediatrician, I beg to differ with John E. Maupin Jr.’s claim that producing more primary care physicians will allow our youth to fight obesity (“Our youth can fight obesity,” Opinion, Nov. 29).
Kids are products of their environment. We as parents and adults control their environment. When underprivileged kids receive two of their three daily meals free at school, we should take this opportunity to make strides. The most common school foods I hear about when I inquire are the following: for breakfast, chicken biscuit and juice; for lunch, pizza and chocolate milk. This is where our taxpayer money is going. This is what kids eat, and why we cannot make a dent in the obesity incidence.
Add to this the limitation of physical education in many schools, and you suddenly see why what we as physicians preach doesn’t make a dent for most kids. By the time the youth have more self-determination, they are already obese.
DR. RICHARD A. LEVITT, ROSWELL
PARENTHOOD
Columnist needs to stress responsibility as cure for poverty
In her column “Employers need a clue about workers’ struggles” (Opinion, Nov. 26), Mary Sanchez writes eloquently about the plight of a single mother of three trying to care for her family. Ms. Sanchez not only fails to offer a reasonable solution; she fails to recognize the problem. Someone should tell her that babies are not delivered by the stork.
Where is the father in these situations? Ms. Sanchez should be writing about people (mothers and fathers) taking responsibility for what they do. When people have children they cannot, or will not support, they fail themselves, society, and the children. Ms. Sanchez should be urging fathers to support their children, she should be urging government to find a way to require fathers to support their children, and she should be urging people not to have children that they cannot support. Personal responsibility — by both the mother and the father — is the only real solution to this problem.
JAMES E. GREEN, ATLANTA
COLUMNIST
Thanks for reprinting Furman Bisher’s work
Regarding “‘I saw him take his first breath … and … his last’” (Sports, Nov. 28), I read Furman Bisher’s column published in 2000 on the life and (too soon) death of his son, Roger. I read it again when the AJC reprinted it recently. I cried both times.
I was reminded of one more thing to be thankful for: that I got to grow up reading Mr. Bisher’s columns.
BRYANT STEELE, ROME
