Old-fashioned, but just right?
Remember walking to school?
Have you noticed the high obesity rate among today's kids? (Nearly one in six are overweight, our Health Blog buddy Scott Hensley reports.)
Well, what if more children walked to school like so many of us old fogies remember doing? Would they be in better shape?
Bobbie O'Brien of member station WUSF in Tampa reports that the Pinellas County (Fla.) Health Department has begun a "Walking School Bus" project in Largo, Fla. The goal: Have children, with one or more adult along for safety's sake, walk to school in organized groups. They get exercise, traffic around the schools gets better and everybody benefits.
As Largo mother Laura Mason says, a "drive-through world" isn't such a good thing:
Bobbie's full report is due on today's All Things Considered. Click here to find an NPR station near you.
This blogger remembers almost always walking the half mile or so to the school in our little upstate New York village. So did my dad, the school principal. Or, when there wasn't snow we rode our bikes (dad did that too). Buses were for the kids from the farms who lived miles away.
As for getting to school:
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