This Is The Dawning Of The Age Of Obesity

It isn't healthy, nor is it comfortable, nor is it pleasant to be morbidly obese. We just become addicted to eating. Eating, if we can put it this way, consumes us.

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art. Duc de la Rochefour-auld

It is a pleasant pastime, as well as a necessity. But in viewing it as a pleasant necessity we feel entitled to consume far more than we require to remain healthy and active. The pleasure that consuming good-tasting food represents for us does transcend merely eating; for many it is a distinctly sensuous pleasure. For some, rating high up there with the pleasure attained by other activities, none of those required for longevity.

Trouble is, without exercising a little bit of discipline, our hunger to simply go on eating long past satiation or need, makes gluttons of us. It does take intentional discipline to eat slowly and enjoy what we're eating, while at the same time being cognizant of the fact that we should be eating moderately, at a level that equates with what our body requires - and no more.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not to well, and talk well but not too wisely. W. Somerset Maugham.

Occasional treats aside, what we do instead is succumb to our perceived need to eat - and eat - and eat. And, given what is available on supermarket shelves today, an ever-growing proliferation of pre-prepared foods laden with fat, sugar and salt, we do ourselves no favours by not carefully considering what we're putting into our mouths.

You can have your cake and eat it; the only trouble is you get fat. Julian Barnes.

No one seems to want to bother to prepare basic foods into meals. It seems to have become a lost skill. Everyone thinks they're too busy to be bothered. Either to learn how to assemble a decent, nutritional meal, or to shop for the ingredients, or to take the time to prepare that meal. It's just so much easier to grab at whatever looks and tastes appealing.

No one wants to read the ingredients label, to take an assessing look at the constituents of the packaged food they're too ready to consume. Taking it on trust that if it's on a supermarket shelf, and it has a recognizable trademark name, its value is beyond question. And those labels touting 'low calorie', or 'low fat' are so misleading. But they're top sellers.

The belly is the reason man does not so easily take himself for a god. Friedrich Nietzsche

So if you're eating something the label claims is low fat or the low calorie substitute of a favourite food, then you're entitled to eat twice as much, right? And the pounds just pile on. Slowly at first, but relentlessly, on go those pounds, so you hardly notice them at first. Until your clothing is no longer comfortable and you've got to shop for that new you.

Animals feed; man eats: only the man of intellect knows how to eat. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The Physiology of Taste.

Emotional stress can be alleviated by eating, for some people. Eating not just anything, but so-called comfort foods. Foods associated with 'comfort' are usually high-calorie, low-nutritional-value foods. And they pack on those calories. Of course those calories can always be worked off with exercise.

A meal for two is enough for three; a meal for three is enough for four. Muhammad: The Sayings of Muhammad: "Food and Etiquette"

Wrong, they can't. It takes too much exercise to work off anything remotely resembling what people eat when they're eating far too much. Other than for elite athletes, most people never exercise sufficiently to make all that much of a difference. It does make a difference, exercising, it helps one's body operate more efficiently, but it doesn't help in weight-loss all that much.

Exercise for muscle-tone, for balance, for the purpose of using all your bodily parts to good advantage, but don't count on it as a weight-loss mechanism. If you've got favourite foods and they're in the high-calorie category, keep them for special, rare occasions. Don't indulge. Care about your body and your health.

Society is composed of two great classes - those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. Nicholas Sebastien Chamfort.

Fat is unpleasant, it constrains one from being active and feeling good. Obese is far worse, and morbid obesity is what too many North Americans and Europeans are succumbing to. With all the attendant health problems that lurk in the background, complementing obesity inclusive of diabetes, heart problems and collapsing joints.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else. Dr. Samuel Johnson.