Ridgewood Is A Restaurant Town

     This is so painfully obvious that even someone who is visiting Ridgewood for the first time would be able to tell on a simple drive through town. What they might not notice are the people who live in Ridgewood who are overweight, especially the school children. I hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between the number of restaurants in town and the number of school children who are corpulent. This can be corroborated by the increase in families who have both parents working, thus they have less time to devote to cooking and eating at home. My hunch is that if people could make the time to eat at home and cooked their own meals then kids might not weigh so much above average. Of course, it doesn't help that children spend time passively watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Internet. I hate to sound like an old fogey but since there weren't a lot of video games 30 years ago when I was growing up in Ridgewood, and no easily accessed Internet, we went outside, or were ordered out by our parents, and couldn't simply recline statically to play. I like to cling to this idea that we played outside a greater share of the day than kids do now. Do I consider that my childhood environment was healthier for kids than the current one? It certainly was different and seemingly centered around outside activities. Though I don't begrudge kids their video games and Internet access as we saw our fair share of TV, too. I only wish kids would spend their time behaving like kids, and less like couch potatoes because it shows all too often when you take the time to look and you notice their portliness.