Did you know that 65% of Americans are overweight? That’s roughly 7 out of 10 people. And, 35% of Americans are obese. That means out of those 7 mentioned above, 4 of them are obese! But, its not only Americans that are noticing an increased waistline, all wealthy nations are noticing this debilitating trend. So, why is this happening? With advances in medicine, health care, and abundances of food… it just doesn’t make sense. Or does it? Let me shed some insight on this problem. The world is now eating more convenience food than ever (fast food, overly processed snacks, preserved foods,etc.)These foods are calorie dense and nutrient poor. -They fill you out, not up. They are loaded with saturated fats, trans fats, sugar, artificial sweetners, and not much else. Also added to our diets are bucket loads of sugar! Sugar is now in almost EVERYTHING: sauces, marinades, sodas, and packaged foods. Sugar is hidden in code words like: high fructose corn syrup, brown rice syrup, maltodextrin, sucrose, dextrose, glucose, and malt syrup. But sugar isn’t the only culprit – ARTIFICIAL SWEETNERS – are contributing to the epidemic too! What’s that? But they don’t have any calories?! No, its worse, they trick your body into believing you are having sugar and your body secretes insulin to help break it down. Insulin, in the absence of sugar, causes your body to store fat. Plus, when we consume artificial sweetners we eat more of them than regular sugars because we feel less guilty about eating them. Artificial sweetners are just that – artificial. They are toxins you are ingesting into your body. An increased toxic load can make your body more susceptible to cancers because toxins are acidic to your body. An acidic environment promotes cancerous growth. Your body’s desperate attempt to reduce the acidic load is to dilute it with water – making you puffy and water logged (now that’s a good look!) And artificial sweetners confuse the body over time so that it doesn’t recognize sugars as having calories. So, when you do have sugar, it plays complete havoc on your system. And putting our convenience food fetish and sugar addictions aside, we are not exercising. Exercise is vital for our bodies to stay lean and our minds to stay sharp. But for some reason, we don’t feel its important. In fact, P.E. is the first thing to get cut out of a school’s budget! So our kids don’t even learn how to exercise! So now we have a weight problem – a big one! And what next, we listen to all those great advertisements from major health care providers that brain wash us that our doctors are responsible for our health. (You have seen the ads, Kaiser Permanente: My doctor is in control. My doctor is in charge of my health) So now we aren’t even responsible for our problem. What did Dennis Miller once say?: We should sue the fork manufacturer! In fact, PARADE magazine just recently published an article about how other nations are trying to deal with this fat crisis. *In Japan, citizens over 40 years of age have to have their waistlines measured. If they are considered too fat, they undergo diet counseling and/or fines! *New Zealand will deny immigrants entry in to their country if they are too heavy. *Great Britain is using exercise tracking devices on their overweight citizens and will get rewarded with store coupons and even days off work for exercising (Positive reinforement – I love it!). *Germany is discouraging candy makers from advertising to kids and is encouraging software companies to develop more games that require movement. * And the U.S.? Hmm. Good question. We need to be doing something fast.
This is so (saddens me to say) accurate. What puzzles me, is why DO people eat out, or eat “ready made” food so often. Believe me, understand the need to have a quick meal, I have 3 little boys under 6 who have an appetite of a 15 year old. But with things like the internet and food network, it is really not that hard to whip up a cheap healthy meal at home. I’ve had nights that I get home at 6pm, go to foodnetwork.com type in my main ingredient (i.e. chicken breast) and BOOM, I have hundreds of choices, that can be made in 45 min.. I can even narrow the search to only give me the healthy options.
Did you see the key word there? Choice. It all comes down to choices that we make. For our selves and our kids. I could not look myself in the mirror everyday, if I was not giving my children the best chance possible to prevent this deadly, curable illness known as obesity. While I know one day they’ll be older, making their own food choices, I hope that the outline I give them will be their guide. I wish everyone would do the same.
Its all about choices, taking a stand and saying, “I will not become a statistic”.
Beautiful article Angie
-Kelley
good article. everyone needs to be reminded on a regular basis about nutritious eating.
Also, I always knew sugar was better (ha) than substitutes
Salt is also a hidden culprit.
I like the “globesity” concept and especially appreciate your point about the responsibility for health being given to doctors when it belongs to the patient. Very well said!
Yours in health,
Ayo K. Bankole, ND, PA-C
more people are becoming obese these days because of too much junk food and too much sugar in snacks and fast foods. |
i feel that that was really interesting. Good publish!¡