Global Obesity
Can anything be more repulsive than a 300-lb man or woman? Well, possibly. How about a man or woman weighing 500 pounds? Sounds impossible, but it isn't, at all. Somehow, lifestyles develop and a kind of psychological lethargy sets in where people may realize that they are gaining weight,and tell themselves they'll get around sooner or later to doing something about it, but that intention just doesn't materialize.
Eating can be such a comfort. When we're frustrated, bored, trying to cope with life, it can seem like a pleasurable break just to push all those irritations and fears temporary out of thought and relax. What could be more relaxing than indulging in the pleasure of consuming food. Not just any kind of food, since it's not necessarily sound nutrition that people crave, but comfort food. Comfort food tends to be food laden with fats, and fat begets fat.
Foods that whet our appetite smell good, taste good. We become accustomed to sweet and sour and fat. Lots of salt, plenty of sugar, not necessarily together, but not necessarily not. Hamburgers, fries, breaded fried chicken, ice cream, whipped cream, milk shakes, sundaes - when we want to give ourselves a taste treat. Tastes good to our discriminating taste buds. Easy to obtain, as near as any of the ubiquitous fast-food outlets.
Poorer countries are becoming more in touch with what pleases the palate of richer countries. In populous India and China the middle class is slowly growing, and they're demanding what they see as better food; more meat and more fat. Obesity, a new study in The Lancet has observed, has become a worldwide phenomenon, it has doubled since 1980.
Why would a world-respected medical journal report that? Well, because obesity becomes a direct lead to highly increased risks of serious health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, asthma. And how about heart disease, and various types of cancer, and increased risk of stroke?
Even children are now not immune to the growing obesity epidemic. It's a familial thing partially; fat parents raise fat children because of patterning into sedentary lifestyles, because of over-eating and poor food choices and the easy availability of fast foods with the wrong type of calories. Calorie-dense, nutritionally absent.
We're not even supposed to think this way, since it abrades the feminist agenda, but working mothers buy a whole lot of convenience foods. And convenience foods are just that; convenient, but not necessarily food, as in whole food, nutritional food, real food, just processed stuff claiming to be food. Which kids eat, because it's there and even they can just haul it out of the freezer, pop the stuff into the microwave and feed themselves.
In Canada in 2009, 73% of women with children under age 16 living at home were employed outside the home. It's tough to be a working mother, with time for not a whole lot, let alone to think about and to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals from primary food products. Kids' health suffers; 17% of children in Canada are overweight; 8% fall into the obese category.
Canadians are by no means the most highly representative population for obesity; that dubious honour goes to the United States, with New Zealand hot in second place, but Canada's right up there. The Lancet looked at 199 countries and territories for their study in global BMIs.
Japan, to their credit had the lowest average BMI in their population; 22 for women, 23 for men, and then Singapore with 24 for men and 23 for women. Whereas the U.S. had a BMI of 28 for both men and women, and New Zealand 27 for both genders. The average BMI for Canadian women rose to 26.7 in 2008, and for men it was 27.5 in 2008.
The deleterious health impact on these populations simply cannot be overstated. The question is, what's to be done about it? It's costly for nations to mend abused bodies, but how to prevail when trying to inform people that their self-destructive behaviour shortens their life-spans at a time when medical science has succeeded in offering us longer life spans?
Eating can be such a comfort. When we're frustrated, bored, trying to cope with life, it can seem like a pleasurable break just to push all those irritations and fears temporary out of thought and relax. What could be more relaxing than indulging in the pleasure of consuming food. Not just any kind of food, since it's not necessarily sound nutrition that people crave, but comfort food. Comfort food tends to be food laden with fats, and fat begets fat.
Foods that whet our appetite smell good, taste good. We become accustomed to sweet and sour and fat. Lots of salt, plenty of sugar, not necessarily together, but not necessarily not. Hamburgers, fries, breaded fried chicken, ice cream, whipped cream, milk shakes, sundaes - when we want to give ourselves a taste treat. Tastes good to our discriminating taste buds. Easy to obtain, as near as any of the ubiquitous fast-food outlets.
Poorer countries are becoming more in touch with what pleases the palate of richer countries. In populous India and China the middle class is slowly growing, and they're demanding what they see as better food; more meat and more fat. Obesity, a new study in The Lancet has observed, has become a worldwide phenomenon, it has doubled since 1980.
Why would a world-respected medical journal report that? Well, because obesity becomes a direct lead to highly increased risks of serious health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, asthma. And how about heart disease, and various types of cancer, and increased risk of stroke?
Even children are now not immune to the growing obesity epidemic. It's a familial thing partially; fat parents raise fat children because of patterning into sedentary lifestyles, because of over-eating and poor food choices and the easy availability of fast foods with the wrong type of calories. Calorie-dense, nutritionally absent.
We're not even supposed to think this way, since it abrades the feminist agenda, but working mothers buy a whole lot of convenience foods. And convenience foods are just that; convenient, but not necessarily food, as in whole food, nutritional food, real food, just processed stuff claiming to be food. Which kids eat, because it's there and even they can just haul it out of the freezer, pop the stuff into the microwave and feed themselves.
In Canada in 2009, 73% of women with children under age 16 living at home were employed outside the home. It's tough to be a working mother, with time for not a whole lot, let alone to think about and to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals from primary food products. Kids' health suffers; 17% of children in Canada are overweight; 8% fall into the obese category.
Canadians are by no means the most highly representative population for obesity; that dubious honour goes to the United States, with New Zealand hot in second place, but Canada's right up there. The Lancet looked at 199 countries and territories for their study in global BMIs.
Japan, to their credit had the lowest average BMI in their population; 22 for women, 23 for men, and then Singapore with 24 for men and 23 for women. Whereas the U.S. had a BMI of 28 for both men and women, and New Zealand 27 for both genders. The average BMI for Canadian women rose to 26.7 in 2008, and for men it was 27.5 in 2008.
The deleterious health impact on these populations simply cannot be overstated. The question is, what's to be done about it? It's costly for nations to mend abused bodies, but how to prevail when trying to inform people that their self-destructive behaviour shortens their life-spans at a time when medical science has succeeded in offering us longer life spans?
Labels: Environment, Health, Human Fallibility
posted by Pieface | 6:39 PM
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