Back in May, the New York Times published an article titled “Child’s Play Is Good for All of Us.” In this article, Gretchen Reynold’s gives an eye-opening and slightly terrifying look at a world where children are exercizing less and less.
According to the study in the article, less-active children means higher chances of developing obesity and disorders like Type-2 Diabetes, heart disease, and strokes later in life. According to that study, which created electronic avatars of a legion of children and then aged them to simulate potential health issues, the United States might one day have to pay over $3 trillion a year in medical-related expenses dealing with these issues that are linked to childhood inactivity.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is, there’s something that can help fix the problem. Exercise! The same study found that if all the simulated children exercised for just three 25-minute periods a week, obesity rates dropped over 4%. In Canada, which has about 6.25 million children between the ages of 7 and 11, it also meant over 100,000 fewer cases of adult-onset heart diseases, diabetes, cancer and strokes.
And if children exercised for a full hour every day? America would shave $120 billion (with a “b”) off that scary number we wrote above.
Now, this is an article about one study, made by one American think tank, about American children. It might not have any direct relation to Canadian children at all.
But at the same time, even if the numbers are completely wrong, it’s clear that more active children lead to not only healthier children, but healthier adults. And that’s the sort of news that’s music to our ears.
Right now, children from across Hamilton, Halton, Haldimand and Norfolk go to Today’s Family Kinder, Adventure, and Extreme Camps. Like our other programs, our Camps stress community involvement, and active learning. Our Summer Campers go on trips, go swimming, and get active every day, and we’re proud of it!
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be visiting our different camp programs and finding out just what our busy campers have been up to so far this summer. We’re really excited to share our stories with you!
That’s it for this week’s blog! Feel free to send us your favourite summer camp stories, either on Twitter or on Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
Until next time,
– Today’s Family
