"Americans are fat and getting fatter by the year. Recent data reported in medical journal Lancet showed that BMI (Body Mass Index), a recognized measurement of obesity, is higher on average in America than in any other nation.
"The obesity problem, however, is international. The report in Lancet states that "In 2008, 9.8 percent of the world's male population were obese, as were 13.8 percent of women. In 1980, these rates were 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent." U.S. eating habits and diets have been exported, many experts say. Nations which before had relatively lean diets which were high in grains and fruits now consume many more soft drinks and hamburgers.
"This trend toward poorer diets has caused obesity to be the most written-about health problem in the United States. Fat Americans are more likely to have diabetes, coronary artery disease, strokes and certain forms of cancer. Less well reported are links between obesity and dementia, obesity and postmenopausal estrogen receptors, and obesity and social status. Thin people, apparently, are more likely to be chief executives and billionaires."
In my Injustice in America class, the issue of who is to blame for this came up. One student said parents, since they control what their kids eat. Another said they should not be blamed since they are working many hours and are targeted by fast food companies who make the food cheap, fast, and fun for kids.
Both are probably right. I equated it to crack cocaine dealers. The people who use it are to blame for making the choice to smoke it. But so too are the dealer of the crack, which is why they are arrested.
Clearly, food is legal and crack is not.
But remember, anything -- literally anything -- can be a crime. Perhaps it is time to look at how we eat and take appropriate steps to stop us from killing ourselves. Or to stop the food companies from killing us. Or both.
In this article, the ten states with the most deadly eating habits. Look who is number 1 (the same state that wants to make a license plate honoring the KKK).
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112083/10-states-with-the-deadliest-eating-habits
I totally agree that the blame should be in both parents and the media. But unfortunately, one of the main business of the media are advertisements and as I mentioned in other blogs, they don't care about our health they care about making profit. The government of course can not monitor how many McDonald are built in the US, probably because a lot of the people in the government get money for their campaign from owners of such corporations. As we talked in class, the ones in power are the ones that make the law, so as citizen we stick with that.
ReplyDeleteThere are several problems to take into account, long working hours make it impossible to even think about eating healthy, affording healthy foods, but we have to start changing that perspective..if we have time to sit in front of a TV watching the next top model, I am sure we have time to think about our eating habits...and if we can afford having a TV at home we also afford eating healthy.
And if we talk about the legal part, obesity is probably killing more American than marijuana, but guess what?...the media will ignore that because they want money from the advertisements that they make...
Of course American's are fatter! Not only do we eat tons of fatty, salty, unhealthy food, but unlike many people throughout the world, we have the money to eat what we want, when we want. It's unfortunate that while we have the means to eat whatever we crave, we choose to eat the most unhealthy things. Maybe if the healthier foods were a little cheaper and the companies that produced them had more money for advertisements, they could be eaten by the masses on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteIf great State of Mississippi wants to honor one of their state's more famous men from history, why not let them? It's not like they are saying we hate black people and white people are the supreme being. The man was a Lieutenant General in the Confederate army. Hopefully, Miss. is honoring him because of his military service and not because of his extracurricular activity as the first Grand Wizard of the Klan.
This is always of such interest to me on a number of different levels, and I’ve been passionate about the restriction of advertising to children long before I even thought I would become a parent. And now, with the recent report on the disparity between a woman’s weight relative to coworkers and her salary, there’s an interesting directionality issue at work, too. Does poverty contribute to obesity or does obesity contribute to poverty?
ReplyDeleteWhat is bizarre to me is as the article states, it’s not as though the media just ignores the obesity “epidemic” or its ultimate effects on individuals and businesses, they report those things front and center. (With sponsorship from chain restaurants and processed foods, no doubt. Love the irony.) I think what may be one missing part of our coverage is the lack of scrutiny about the POWER of advertising. I rarely run across anyone who realizes that we’re one among only a handful industrialized countries who allow nearly unfettered advertisements to children because the effects those advertisements have on them. It seems the “food desert” phenomenon is also under the radar for most people; we place blame on those for not buying veggies when there are no real grocery stores or safe/affordable transportation to get there. I by no means believe that individuals should be absolved of all blame, but we do need to consider and understand the problems people very different from ourselves face.
I’m not really a consumer of the “mainstream media,” so I have limited knowledge of how this is reported there, but a few things have trickled to me. The biggest of which is the insanity surrounding Michelle Obama’s efforts to fight childhood obesity. I don’t know when in the hell that broccoli became socialist, but apparently it has. I’ve seen Fox News clips of hosts freaking out over her suggestions to eat veggies and move more and I sat in amazement that the darling of the right showed up at a school with sugar cookies because there were attempts at limiting sweets in the classroom. Because I guess abstinence and/or self control belongs in the bedroom, not the lunchroom…and I could go on to make all sorts of off-color jokes here, but I’ll stop. The point is, now that our First Lady has taken on this issue, stuffing our kids full of transfats and sugar has become our god-given right. I would love to see some changes to the way food companies work, but in this climate it’s just not happening.
@ Bekki, I always appreciate your posts. Thanks for getting it! :-)
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