In a Beat

Technology continues to boggle my mind. 

You know when your father is staring at his phone and saying “What is this envelope on my phone?  And how do I make it go away without getting charged for opening it?” There were some choice expletive deleted-s in that quote, mainly targeted at phone service companies, but I chose to save you all. 

…Yea, I’m kind of like that. I’m a premature version of “wait wait, slow down. Remind me, what does that button do again?” Probably a huge reason why I never got Zotero working on my computer the other day…

In my own defense: 1) Why bother concerning myself when I have ten people around me that could name and locate the number of petting zoos within a 100 mile radius in 30 seconds flat, and 2) Something tells me that technology and obesity are positively correlated. Throw in a growing sense of entitlement and you’ve got an American.

During my nutrition education lesson today I touched on this concept. Show of hands out there, (I’m dead serious, I figured out what that button does so I can see you and your hand!) how many of you would go through the trouble of milling wheat, milking cows, collecting eggs, and baking a pie  from scratch?  Now, how many of you would pick an apple off of a tree? How many of you would choose a pie if it took about a minute, and about a dollar, and you didn’t even have to set foot on the ground (I’m totally not referring to a certain fast food’s apple pie here).

I know exactly what happened to that apple I picked off the tree. .

Get the message?

The kicker to this whole convenience/technology standpoint was that I was teaching valuable lessons to Canadian high school students today in Saint Louis Missouri. How you ask?

Live over the internet of course, silly. 

It’s an interactive lesson. So when I asked “show of hands” I really was dead serious. And speaking about dead, Ray Vollmer, the Adventures in Medicine and Science coordinator, displays my nutrition lessons’ consequences by showing the students healthy and diseased hearts from people who have donated their bodies to science.  Pretty wild, huh? 

 
At the “heart” of my power point lesson we discuss the categories of fat, the types of fat that make up those categories, the food that makes up the type of fat, and the impact of those food/fat on your health. Then at the end we play games like “which are healthier choices?” and “True or false questions.” 

I’ll give you a feel of it.

True or False, eating late at night will cause you to gain weight? 

False! Yes, our metabolisms are subject to timing of eating but the bottom line is that if you exceed the amount of calories, regardless of time, that you need to support your weight (no matter if it is coming from excess carbohydrate, protein, or fat) you will gain weight.

The reason behind the myth? People probably make poorer choices and have lower energy to prepare healthier meals at the end of the day. They also have fewer opportunities to burn calories if they’re home bound and bed bound.

Thanks for playing along! I hope you believed in my ability to use technology so much that you verbalized your answer to your computer screen. Classic example: mama murph compensating her own technology knowledge deficit by puffing out her chest and loudly and very articulately verbalizing “yes” to the credit card screen at the grocery store checkout lane rather than verifying the amount  by pushing the green button on the screen. Even though the checkout woman was politely choking her laughter when she corrected my mother, you’ve got to hand it to the lady…this is the way of future. 

But no matter the way of the technology future, our bodies rely on good ole balance, variety, and moderation.