Has anyone watched "The Weight of a Nation" on HBO? I'm watching all 4+ hours today. Over 2/3, 68% of Americans are overweight or obese! They reveal a problem, without actually talking about it. There is definitely a genetic factor. They show that in the 80's, there was a massive spike in obesity that has continued to rise. They also show that obesity rates are highest among the poor and decline as income rises. Well, let's see. The 80's is when we had a sudden spike in processed foods. We added more chemicals to our food and switched from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup as the primary sweetener in foods. This is when we started using antibiotics and growth hormone in the animals we eat and increased the use of pesticides in our fruits and vegetables. Poor people tend to eat more processed foods, because they're less expensive. Anyone see a connection? This should be the most obvious thing and the closest they come to saying anything is showing pictures of the various fast food restaurants. At some point, someone with a national audience and who has the credibility that this group of doctors have, needs to call out the real problem, which is our food. No one wants to do that though, because it would result in the need for a massive change to our food supply and cause massive change in the job market surrounding it. Yet, if we don't, we'll just slowly kill ourselves. All these chemicals are causing more than just obesity. Look at the cancer rates for those same years and see the corresponding spike. And all of this leads to massive profits for a handful of major "food" manufacturers and then for the pharmaceutical companies, as they make all the drugs to "fix" all the problems caused by our food supply. There are so many serious issues we, as a nation, are facing, but what do the "leaders" and talking heads discuss? Trivialities. Instead of talking about what "celebrities" are doing, who they're screwing and if they're pregnant, we need to talk about the uncomfortable truths that are truly going to be how we weaken and destroy ourselves from within.
All's I know from working as a Paramedic and having to lift patients...folks have ballooned out in the last couple of decades. Use to be, heavy weights were the occasional calls. Now we pray for somebody under 250 just every once in a while for a break.
People have the option to eat better foods, its just more expensive and you have to cook it! Ive always been into working out and diet is a huge part of it. The rule of thumb is that you ARE what you EAT. If you eat crap, your going to look and feel like crap! Its also important to exercise. Most americans are to lazy to exercise and care even less about their food intake.
I'm sure that eating low nutrition foods has something to do with it. But I kinda think lack of exercise has much more. When Kennedy was President he mandated physical fitness for school age children, and as a result, the kids I grew up with were in pretty good shape. In high school I had P.E. in the morning, practice for football, or track (cross country), after school. Worked till about 7 pm, then practiced indoor short track speed skating till 11pm. Back up at 6am every morning. It paid off though. I skated for Pickwick out of Burbank California. And twice we took the National Indoor Short Track Championships. Kinda frosted the Canadians, that a bunch of Valley Boy Surfers could beat them at their national sport. But we did, and we were fast. Here's a pic of the 1972 Thanksgiving Day Meet, I'm on the rail in white. 168 lbs. No Fatties in speed skating. And yes, I won that race, and quite a few others too. No video games back then, just sports & work. Want to be a winner? Work For It.
So much truth in this. My two boys were raised like I was raised in the 60's & 70's. Yes, they had their video games. But they also had backyard football, walks with me in the neighborhood, school sports and working around the house. So far, at 16 and 18, they're both pretty lean and mean. LOL
You bet. I made my son get his butt up and go out, he is 30 now and in the best shape of his life. Just do it!!
We raised our kids the same way. Lots of sports and helping out in the yard and garden. Didn't hurt them one bit.
Agree with the exercise thing. That high fructose corn syrup is some nasty stuff, and they're putting it in damn near everything that is sweetened. There is one single thing I stress to anyone who starts to moan and groan about their weight issues to me: get off the soda pop/sugary drinks and replace it with milk, 100% natural fruit juice, or water. Absolutely everyone I suggested this to who has done it lost a minimum of 30 pounds without changing anything else in their diet or exercise habits. Don't believe the hype about natural foods costing more than processed foods. Can eat for a week and spend less than $20 per person at your local farmer's market (triple that when adding meats to the shop list for the week), and that's all regionally grown food not processed at all. If you hunt, eat what you kill. If you don't hunt but know someone who does, ask them if you can buy a portion of their kills. Bought a hunter friend of mine a new scope he wanted in exchange for half a deer, and still saved $ over buying the same amount of meat at the grocery store. Not a hunter myself. Perfectly able to do so, just prefer to eat what's already dead and available, be it from a grocery store or from a hunter. Prefer to shoot wildlife with a camera
Well said. Cost is a big problem with food. McDs and ramen noodles are cheaper than healthier options...
Actually, a lot of people don't have the option of eating better foods. The lower income folks, especially in the poor neighborhoods, don't have access to a lot. One of the neighborhoods in West Philly (I ended up watching the last two episodes this afternoon) hadn't had a supermarket in it for over decade! Philly's easy enough to get around in, if you don't have a car, but grocery shopping becomes a challenge. They also showed how, at a corner store in that or a similar neighborhood, a particular brand of chips (one I'm familiar with and considering the company very surprised by this) sells a bag a of potato chips for .25 retail. This same bag of chips, in other, higher income areas, is sold for .75. Same size, same product. The guy who owned the store said that's how a lot of his products are. They asked him if there was any healthy alternative he could sell at that price and he laughed as he shook his head no. He would love to, because he doesn't like what he's seeing in his neighborhood either, but you sell what your customers want and can afford. Stopping soda, regular or diet, makes a big difference. Fruit juices, regardless of fresh squeezed or from concentrate, are very high in sugar. They showed that 12oz of apple or grape juice have 10 or 12 teaspoons of sugar and OJ has 8! One of the doctors said "you squeeze the juice out and throw away the fiber...fruit is sweet as nature's way of getting you to eat your fiber!" As I said above, not everyone has access. If you go down to the South side of Atlanta and you're not going to find a local farmer's market. We didn't have one where I grew up either and we actually had agriculture fairly close by. Inner cities, which is where most of the obesity problem resides, is both low income and lacking in the ability to get to places where they can find this stuff. They were showing the life expectancy of different neighborhoods in the same cities. The ones in Baltimore on opposite sides of town, one upper middle class and the other below the poverty line, were 16 or 18 years difference in life expectancy. There was one in Ohio, I think, that 8 miles separated two neighborhoods and they had over a 20 year difference! One neighborhood averaged 67 the other 90! Yup, and it turns out that it's ultimately the government's fault. Farm subsidies, subsidizing corn and soybeans, has kept the cost of those crops low, while fruit and vegetable prices are up 117% for the same period! That has led to feeding corn and soybeans to our meat supply, keeping meat prices lower. It made using high fructose corn syrup a cheaper sweetener than sugar, which is why it's being used so much in cheaper, processed, foods. It's the reason that fast food restaurants can keep their prices so low and put 1000 calories in you for under $5. They said the average American takes in over 600 calories more than they need every day. It doesn't take long! They also pointed to the lack of exercise; again in the poorer neighborhoods, the parks, if they have any, have not been maintained, so kids don't go there to play. A lot of places don't have sidewalks...at all, not just ones in disrepair. There are plenty of roads around here that don't have any sidewalks...you'd think a city the size of Atlanta, and all of its close suburbs, would've taken care of things like that by now.
