34 percent of all children weigh too much for their size and age

The nation that coined the phrase "I love to go a-wandering" has become a nation of couch potatoes who spend record sums eating out and who watch cookery shows on a dozen TV channels and who prefer to drive to work or school rather than walk.

The old days are long gone when few people had cars and when bananas and other "exotic" foods were unavailable and when people supped on bread, wurst and potatoes and chocolate was reserved for Christmas and Easter.

A century ago, Germany was known not only as the country that invented the kindergarten, but also as the country that invented health spas and that popularised hiking and gymnastics. Every town used to have a "turnverein" or gymnastics club that served as a kind of informal town hall and social gathering place for all ages.

So older Germans could scarcely believe their ears when the government recently unveiled plans for diet and exercise programmes for the nation's young people along with possible restrictions on advertising and availability of fast-food snacks and sweets.

But the ambitious plans were immediately condemned by conservatives and liberals alike, who cautioned that the plans smack of Nazi-era youth training drills and prescribed lifestyle regimens.

*quote1*In an appeal before the Bundestag parliament, federal Consumer Affairs Minister Renate Kuenast said 34 percent of all children under 14 weigh too much for their size and age, and eight per cent are clinically obese.

Those figures come only days after another survey showed that a third of all German teenagers smoke cigarettes - one of the highest rates in the industrialised world.

"This may be the first generation in German history to die before their elders due to lifestyle-related health problems," said Kuenast.

She was citing figures by the Robert Koch Institute which also show that two-thirds of all adult German men and over half of all women are also overweight.

Ironically, the Robert Koch Institute statistics point out that that this is the first generation of post-unification Germans who have been able to eat all they want.

Consumer Affairs Minister Renate Kuenast unveiled plans for diet and exercise

While the situation improved quickly in the west after World War II, East Germans continued to suffer periodic shortages of foodstuffs up until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

In the weeks after the Wall came down, East Berliners stood in long lines at West Berlin fruit stands to buy bananas - an image that has become ingrained on the nation's collective memory.

Many East Germans had never tasted a banana prior to 1989. Now they, and their western cousins, are being confronted with the fact that they have over-indulged for the past decade and a half.

"It is time for us to forge a coalition for nutrition and exercise," Kuenast, a Greens politician, said in issuing her appeal for a leaner, fitter Germany.

*quote2*She envisions a coalition of "volunteer efforts" by the food industry, television advertisers, school administrators and nutritionists to reshape the way young Germans eat.

"We want to promote food products which are healthier and lower in calories," she said. "We need to promote mandatory physical education in the schools, something that schools in recent years have been too lax about."

She also called for restrictions on advertising snacks and sweets on TV shows catering to young audiences.

For critics, however, this all sounds too much like Adolf Hitler's infamous rallying cry: "German youth must be as tough as leather, as swift as greyhounds and as hard as Krupp steel."

"This is all a lot of populistic claptrap," said Hans-Michael Goldmann of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). "The whole thing raises an eerie spectre; especially talk about mandatory P.E. and intimidating manufacturers into 'doing the right thing'. It frightens me."

Conservatives warned of creating a costly new bureaucracy.

"This is all going to cost taxpayers more money, I can just tell," said Ursula Heinen of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). "The whole idea is too intrusive and too expensive."

But Kuenast's Greens party supports her plan.

"The conservatives are engaged in stubborn denial of reality," said Greens parliamentarian Ulrike Hoefken. "What's at issue here is saving young people from the deadly clutches of cola and hamburgers."

July 2004

DPA

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Life in Germany, diet, overweight