Comment by bmer

Re: food, I don't disagree, but how do we get decent food? It's hard enough to find decent food if you're an adult. For example: sugar is commonly used in the food industry to help make everything taste better, including savoury food! This is not yet something I have confirmed, but I suspect also that most food comes from farms that cannot provide nutritious vegetables, fruits, eggs, or milk due to exhausted soils and poorly fed (and cruelly kept) animals. In the second case: apart from the incredible cruelty, how nutritious do you think the milk of factory cows, or the eggs of factory chickens, if they themselves, are not healthy? Similarly, how do we know that plant produce that comes from farms that tend to grow only one type of crop still meets nutritional standards? Is anyone measuring? Would love to get some clarification on this.).

Re: physical activity. It might be easier than food because of the above concerns, because it is much more within our control?

We're helped out in part by the fact that physical exercise feels good.

The issue is that the way physical exercise is presented in school tends to be through competition and/or sports. From here, and due to other signals being received, it's not hard for kids to develop immense self-consciousness which makes it something they wish to avoid.

Kids also don't learn to combine meditation and physical exercise. Meditation to help manage the social anxiety, and to help manage the physical discomfort. Yoga is surprisingly simple (no equipment required) yet effective for maintaining flexibility, posture, and strength, while also being easily amenable to incorporating meditation.

For cardiac health: there is little science employed in helping a student gradually improve their physical capacity, in a gradual fashion. HIIT is some of the best we know of for time-efficient exercises that also naturally take into account personal limits. How do you know you've done enough HIIT for the day? You're panting hard. You've hit your goal, your body will do the rest. Tolerance for discomfort improves hand-in-hand with improvements to self-image, and increased cardiac fitness. Before the student knows it, it isn't "awful drudgery" to consider doing a "12 minute run". Because they've gradually prepared for it!