In eighth grade, rabbis would regularly reward us with "Mishnayos Pizza Parties" and things like that. They'd offer chalav yisrael doughnuts to the kids who would refrain from eating chalav stam. Boys in my class who were the best learners always got little rewards in the form of candy and other types of unhealthy foods. The rebbes are right on track with knowing what pre/post pubescent kids like. Just one look at a garbage can in your typical yeshiva classroom after recess and you'll see the class' taste in food manifested in the form of a giant pile of candy wrappers, soda cans and chip bags. Kids eat junk food. That's understandable. Schools supporting that habit by regularly rewarding kids with junk food? Not so much.
Now I'm not innocent of having eaten junk food as a kid, or even as an adult. Who is? I think most people partake in unhealthy eating habits some of the time. However, as some folks pointed out in Frumsatire's comments, these bad eating habits in the yeshiva system are formed from a combination of a few things.
School lunches are probably a factor. Unlike public school lunch menus that are regulated by nutritionists, most yeshivas serve greasy, calorie heavy foods that are most probably prepared and regulated by some guy who cooked shmaltzy meals in a sub for the Russian navy. (The cook in my childhood yeshiva had a bunch of Russian sailor tattoos.) If they're fed pizza and hot dogs on a weekly basis (supplemented with Kugel or fries of course. Not a green vegetable in sight.) how are they going to eat when they're not at school? Even when they cook "healthy" meals that contain a vegetable or two, the food is usually drowning in oil. Sadly, many yeshiva moms just don't care. They're not happy about their kids being fat, and some struggle with it because they want their kids to be healthy, and at the end of the day its hard to get a kid to diet. So what does mom do? Either gives up, or doesn't care in the first place.
Why are yeshiva kids getting fatter? Especially around puberty? Well, besides for all the regular reasons, theres one possible prime factor that could get kids to think about their weight that isn't present in the yeshiva community. Attracting the opposite sex. Yep. Some kids start to look at each other in that way sometimes as early as 5th grade. Of course, boys and girls are separated and basically discouraged to even look at each other until they're in their 20s, which in the case of bad eating and obesity, makes it easy to not care about looks until that point.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking boys/girls only schools and I'm certainly not saying this happens to every yeshiva kid, but it is a pretty common problem and I think the lack of social interaction between boys and girls leaves no incentive for older kids to want to look good, and that goes hand in hand with healthy body weight and eating habits. Moishy is never exposed to girls in a social setting, so he doesn't care if he's fat. His friends poke fun at him every now and then, but he just shakes it off and moves on. However, if a girl he fancied was periodically in his environment...he just might care about how he looks. So the question is, who is at fault? The parents? The yeshivas? I'd say both, in that order.
The parents will obviously never agree to letting their boys and girls mingle (a topic for another day...) so they need to crack down on schools to serve healthier foods and get the educators to encourage healthy eating habits and not write it off as some kind of issue that's not the schools' problem.
This of course applies to the schools that are not feeding their kids junk food so they can keep their minds off the opposite sex. (Yes, there are institutions that practice that for this reason!) Those places really need to rethink their chinuch strategy. Nefesh Briah Beguf Bari (A healthy soul lives in a healthy body). Of course a change in habits would require effort on the kids' part, but the proper direction needs to be shown from the responsible adults. Building healthy eating habits at a young age is the key to making sure our kids are healthy throughout their lives. Lets hope some change comes so that out future doesn't end up being a race of obese yids rolling around in motorized chairs.
