Young people are eating increasingly unhealthy and not exercising enough

There is unfortunately a negative trend going on among young people in terms of eating behavior and also exercise behavior. This is evident from TNO research 'Exercise and eating behavior of children, adolescents and adults'. Currently, our young people score very poorly compared to other European young people.

Europe

In Europe, young people in the Netherlands score very low when it comes to eating fruits and vegetables. On average, they reach 300 grams, while Polish youths already eat 577 grams per day. That's almost double.

93% of Dutch young people do not eat enough fruits and vegetables and 85% of young people do not exercise enough. But who is causing this?

The research leaves some stitches when it comes to who is responsible for this. Looking at my generation, it's fair to say that we are a spoiled generation. We basically have everything and we don't pick up a whole lot from each other.

We also prefer not to be meddled with. We decide for ourselves what we do.

Our children naturally adopt that idea. When I look around me I see many of my generation not eating well. Lots of fat, lots of fries, hair salons and other crap. And then they think it's crazy that those kids do the same. Well...

In my opinion, you need to address the parents but yes that will be difficult because they often have the "don't meddle with me" idea and feel easily attacked.

It is in weze quite simple solution. Raise taxes on fatty and unhealthy foods and raise health care premiums for those people and lower health care premiums for people who do want to take responsibility for their health.

Fine if you want to eat fat and unhealthy, but then it will also cost you more to insure yourself. And reward the people who do live healthy, don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs and eat healthy.

Look I am no saint and have had a lot to drink and used bad things so I pay more. That's just the price then and I think that's fair. If we all pick this up together I think it will be solved in no time. At least in one generation.

Another way

Another way is to anchor fat eating to something very nasty. Now, for most young people, it is anchored to something delicious, a reward.

When you can anchor that food with all the bad feelings then you automatically avoid it. Hypnotherapy could be a godsend or NLP techniques to that teach young people and parents.

For example, parents can anchor fatty and unhealthy eating with all bad feelings and healthy eating with yummy feelings. In fact, it is often the other way around.

Every time your child feels good, briefly touch his upper arm and anchor good feelings there. Then when you make him think of vegetables, touch his upper arm again and fire the anchor. He will then get good feelings about vegetables.

If you do this often it can be a super solution!