Before I try and touch on what everyone else said let me give a great point of view that my mother shared with me...I don't have exact dates but I think my point can hold its own. Up until about fifty years ago there was no such thing as organic food--which is what is deemed healthiest, no? That is because up until about fifty years ago ALL food was organic. No one was creating partially hydrogented soybean oil and other things like that as a cost effective way to mass produce food which would be cheaper to make and last longer on the shelf. So before even going down into an individual level of responsibility for self actions people live in entire world of artifical fake crap which the human body wasn't meant to eat. Unless people found out about that fact and then find a means to educate themselves on exactly what the difference between processed and nonprocessed food is they will never know the difference and continue to eat unhealthy things which they may not know is unhealthy (think of those fruit juices which have only 5% fruit juice in them).

Now of course there should be a level of personal responsibility whether you are magically 18 years old and an adult or still legally a child. Afterall people could eat a meal with lots of nuitriants but is still loaded with fat. Also how a person stays active, or lack thereof, is largely personal responsibility; in my opinion. FaithEmblem, StabbingEctasy, Ruby Hayashi, fabifly, TekNoKen, and +Phaggot+ you all said a few different thing how parents do or should enstill vaules in their kids. Personally when I was kid one treat my Dad would give me was cabbage candy! Basically it was the heart of the cabbage cut up into little peices, however when I was "extra good" he gave me peices of what he called candy. I didn't know any better because I was impressionable, like a lot of children. Even if children decide to eat or not eat certain things or to be or not be active somewhere there was probably a role model that gave the child the idea to do the same as them or the opposite of them.

I still like eating my cabbage candy because it tastes a lot better to me then getting twinkies or a lot of other common treats, though I do love chocolate.

So overall there surely need to be balance on what people do, but if people don't learn good ways to balance their lives growing up its less likely they can learn later in life. I don't have my book on hand but there was a statistic showing that people who were prone to be obese and unhealthy when they were young almost had no chance to change their lives when they become independant adults. This was a case study done. And from my observations and personally expierence I think thats pretty true. From all the people I've known growing up only two people I knew were obese as kids grew up and were able to become very fit and thin. I also know only a few people who did the opposite; they were fit as children but now are not as healthy as they once were. For myself I was always a stick of a person as a child so I was happy when puberty gave me curves, even if I wasn't as skinny as I used to be I have body dimensions which make me happy.

This topic thrills me xd I could really go on, like explaining why partially hydrogented soybean oil is one of the worst human inventions ever! I think I will explain just to share my knowledge with you so you know the truth. First I learned this information from a class I took at my college about health and fitness...because I needed a PE credit for my degree, for no reason I might add.

Okay PHSO (partially hydrogented soybean oil) is made from soybeans. Since they are beans they are a plant. Plants have oils just as animals we use as food have fats. One of the differences between plant oils and animal fats is that at room tempurater animal fats are more solid in form while plant oils are more liquid in form. Animals fats are also more prone to rot and require more care and cost to keep for entented periods of time. Now this is where the PHSO begins to come about. Technically soybean oil has less fat and cholesterol then animal fats, because of that companies have wanted to use that in place of animal fat to make their products appear healthier. However a problem occurs when trying to replace the more solid animal fats with more liquid soybean oil. In order to keep their food from changing texture or distilling they somehow add hydrogen atoms to the strands of soybean oil molocules. This then makes PHSO, depending on how much hydrogen is chemically bonded to the soybean oil. Now we have a mostly solid PHSO product...which cannot be digested by the human body because it simulates the chemical structure of animal fats but it is not an animal fat. Therefore anything with PHSO or just HSO (hydrogenated soybean oil) will be stored in the body as fat which cannot be burned like normal fat. Thats just evil.