Overweight Children

I have been working at the Dairy Queen in Lamar, MO for about 7 years now and I have seen a lot of people come and go. I know who my regulars are and what they are going to order before they even tell the girl at the register what they want. I am the most expeirenced cook at my job and therefore I am pretty much in charge of my kitchen domain. I've noticed that most of the customers that I am cooking for are overweight, which is to be expected since I work at a fast food place. Fast food places are found everywhere you look and they are the prime reason as to why the obesity rate has gone sky high in this country.  I've seen people who are more overweight than others and I've seen people who order enough food for three people, just for themselves and then go back for a large ice-cream treat afterwards. The other day I saw the most horrific thing that I have ever seen in my years of working at Dairy Queen. A whole family of ridiculously overweight people came to the registers to order some food. There was a mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and two HUGE little boys standing in front of the registers looking at the menu trying to figure out what they were going to order. I had never seen people that were this overweight, but what really chilled me to my core was the fact that the two little boys were the size of two huge boulders and they couldn't have been any older than the age of six! The first little boy looked to be about 3 or 4 years old and he had to have weighed over 125 pounds and the other little boy that looked to be about 6 was about 150 or more! As I stared in disbelief at this family, they started to place their order. I remember the order exactly as the day that I made it, the order was 6 six piece chicken strip dinners with a large order of mushrooms, fries, or onion rings with each one! I can't even eat a whole 4 piece chicken strip dinner, let alone a 6 piece with a large greasy side to go along with it! Anyway, after their food was delivered to them, I stood there, in my kitchen area, and watched them devour every crumb of it, and I defanitely mean EVERY CRUMB. I then watched the mother and the two little boys come back up to the counter to order ice-cream. She ordered a large blizzard for herself and then ordered each of the two boys a peanut buster parfeit. Our peanut buster parfeit's are pretty much like a freakin' huge sundae with three layers of hot fudge and peanuts in between vanilla ice-cream. After witnessing all this, all I could do was shake my head with disgust. Why on earth would somebody let their child become that overweight!? I'm not bashing overweight people to make fun of them, because I actually have a sister that just turned 21 that weighs about 300 pounds. I know that she is overweight and I also know that being too overweight can be very harmful to a person's health. Back to my story though, I got home from work that day and the show "The Dr. Oz Show" was on the television. Now, usually I don't really watch "The Doctor Oz Show" but on this day it really caught my eye, because, ironically, it was about overweight children and the harmful effects of this problem. On the show there was an overweight mom and dad that had a 4 year old daughter that weighed over 100 pounds. The parents of this little girl were sobbing and admitted to the doctors that she was already beginning to show signs of diabeties and asthma and that they were stressed to the max worrying about what to do with their daughters weight before it becomes a serious health issue. Doctor Oz then asked them a series of questions about what type of food the family eats in a typical day, how much time they spend getting up and moving around or going outside, and how much time they spend watching television or being on the computer. The parents admitted that they do not "get up and move" and that they eat fast food everyday and they spend all their time in front of the television. At this point I'm sitting there thinking, "HELLO! That is why you have an issue with being overweight, because your daily routine is unhealthy!". Then, as I figured, Doctor Oz told the family that they needed to change their routine and quick or their life spans could be cut short due to the weight problems and unhealthy habits that they were practicing. He then proceeded to teach them how to change their habits so that their daughter wouldn't be faced with horrible health issues later on down the road. I just hope that they took his advice seriously and really did change their routine at home, because that is just ridiculous to pass that kind of a habit off to a four year old that clearly has a weight issue already. After watching Doctor Oz's show I really agreed with him on the fact that the child's overweight problem was the parents problem being passed onto the child and the child doesn't understand about why it's bad to carry on that unhealthy behavior, so it's really the parent's fault and their responsibility to get their child straightened out so that it doesn't end in tradgedy. Anyway, I just wanted to vent about those two little boys that I saw, with my own eyes, at Dairy Queen. I just think that is so irresponsible of those two boy's parent's to expose them to those kinds of unhealthy eating habits! I bet they took those little boys home and they plopped right down in front of the television and stayed there until it was time for them to go to bed. Just to give you an idea of how big these boys are, I found a link of an overweight boy in China that is about the same size as these two boys. It's really kind of sad that a parent would let that happen to their child. All they would have to do is make them get up and go outside for a couple hours to play and instead of feeding them greasy fast food everyday they could just go get some good food from the grocery store and fix them a decent home cooked meal. It really isn't that hard people!