When I was a child, we had a set dinner time where the entire family sat down to a complete meal.

It consisted of salad, a vegetable, potatoes and a portion of meat or fish. My meal was put on a plate and presented to me for consumption. I never said, “I won’t eat this or that!” What I seemed to dislike, I ate fast. When I wanted more of what I liked, I simply had to present a clean plate and I was rewarded with more portions of the “good” stuff. The two things I learned were that eating the healthy things was not painful and that my mother never tried to poison us.

The other thing that I learned was that I never missed school because I was never sick. Yes, the measles, mumps and chicken pox presented themselves, but I was never sick for unknown reasons for weeks at a time.

Sickness was not a regular in our lives. We got a good night’s sleep, ate well and lived hard.

Recently, I caught a “Today Show” piece that talked about more than 2,600 children a year who have eaten a new single-unit washing detergent because it looked like candy.

As I watched it, my first thoughts were: “How stupid! Shouldn’t parents be watching their children better?” and “Who in their right mind would eat detergent?” But then I blinked and started to think about the present less-than-10 age group and quickly expanded to all the students who currently inhabit the universities across the country.

Let’s zero in on everyone younger than the age of 26. If you are in that group or have children within that age demographic, close your eyes and think about what you or your children are eating or ate for the last week’s meals. Did your 8-year-old demand only french fries and chocolate milk for dinner? Did you say, “OK!”? Did you approve of eating pizza three days in a row as a staple diet, only to allow everyone in the family to take a bottle of Ensure to try to make up for the deficiencies in their diet?

This opens up a plethora of questions. When did you eat a salad as a regular part of your eating habits?

When did you eat a balanced meal containing a vegetable, potato and a meat or fish item?

How many times do you skip the rounded meal just to have a Coke and dessert? If you eat in Brody or one of the many food venues on campus, do you eat what you want or what you need?

As we look at the American population, it is plain to see we have given up the race to be somewhat healthy.

As you look at “Honey Boo Boo” and all the people who barely can walk into Old Country Buffet with their 130-pound 7-year-olds, it is evident that a healthy diet is not the number one concern of many modern Americans.

Now that is not to say that we do not have a choice-looking, buff, tight student population residing on MSU’s campus.

If you simply walk around, you will see fantastic specimens of bodies made for the calendar of good physiques. Oh, how I wish I was 20-something again and could tell my younger self to keep eating well and exercising every day.

But that time has faded into the past. Now I have to fight to keep in shape, and the battle is more than an uphill climb.

The interesting thing is that we have learned nothing from the past. Go back to the kids eating detergent just because they thought it was candy.

I tried eating dirt once. It was stupid, and it was awful. I spit it out and vowed never to eat dirt again. I cannot fathom any child, let alone 2,600 a year, taking a mouthful of nasty detergent, tasting that crud and swallowing it.

But it appears that these kids scarf that stuff in, swallow it and then get severely ill. Is there possibly a parenting problem across the country? Is it perhaps time to go back to an earlier age when the ways we fed ourselves took a different tack?

Craig Gunn is a guest columnist at The State News and an an academic specialist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.