Obesity in America

Obesity in America has become a major contributing factor to death, disability and societal costs; it has increasingly contributed to the loss of quality of life, to the skyrocketing of health-care expenditures, and the loss of overall productivity of the nation. The begin of the obesity epidemic started in the 1980's and can so far be called unique in the history of mankind. Today about 1/3 of the American people are considered obese, another third overweight, and only a small minority meets the activity guidelines of the American health organizations.
Obesity has biological and psychological aspects that are an ongoing challenge to control: As humans are not genetically programmed to turn away from available foods, the ubiquity of low-priced and high-processed food items, as well as increasing serving sizes lead to creeping weight gains everywhere. For example, a children's meal at a restaurant contains about twice as much the calories than a meal cooked at home, because of the low cost, high calorie ingredients used to produce it. These developments have been accompanied by massive commercial and marketing campaigns, tempting and directing people towards unhealthy, high calorie items. Along with this comes a life-style that is increasingly less active as physical activity has been engineered out of people's lives through the usage of cars, appliances, screen time and sedentary occupations. This goes fundamentally against the human biological disposition that is designed for an environment with low availability of food and an accompanying high calorie activity to obtain the food necessary for survival.
Obesity is more widespread in low income areas. This is usually due to the fact that these areas do not have adequate access to fresh produce or cannot afford the relatively higher prices of fresh food. They also lack safe places for people to work out, children to play and run, or just do not offer a secure walk able neighborhood.
If one's income is limited, one tends to spend money on high calorie, low cost items in an effort to get the most lasting calorie intake from the money now available under the insecurity of when the next meal will be available.  But even families with more income tend to eat the wrong kind of meal choices, as processed foods are always conveniently available in stores and drive-troughs, making it easy to eat everywhere at every moment without going through the effort of ingredient selections and meal preparations. Therefore, most people, at least at times, end up eating items they know very little about in terms of what they are made out of, what kind of fat they contain, or how much sugar is hiding in their food. Commercial food is mainly sold under the premise that it has to be low-cost for the food producers and prepares, while tasty through the generous additions of fats and sweeteners.

The fact that the industrialization of nations brought a profound change of life style almost everywhere, that is causing weight problems is undoubted, however the question remains on how the American people came to eat in a way that accelerated the extreme raise of obesity beyond every other nation. The documentary delivers a clear answer to this. With the industrialization of all means of manufacturing, farming was one of the sectors that were transformed into an economical branch that instead of producing food -with all its delectable and different properties- was turned into a field that produces commodities, just like any other mass producing sector. The government has been subsidizing the industrialization of foods massively to attain over-productions for export and for animal feeds. The increased use of grains as animal feeds led to a higher consumption in meat products, which in return increased the average intake of saturated fats through the diet. Through substantial subsidiaries, the government encouraged the mono culture of corn and soy; today 50% of America's farmland are used for the cultivation of these grains that are the basis for corn syrups, soy fats (often hydrogenated), and starches highly used in processed foods. Dairy, a product derived from the increased farming of animals is another high and saturated fat pillar of the average American diet. The national subsidizing policy keeps motivating farmers to overproduce the very products we are already overeating. At the same time, it facilitates the conglomeration of the farming industry in big business corporations, while slowly killing the small farmers that tend to provide varieties of fresh foods locally.  With the disappearance of small farmers the farming of fruits and vegetables, that is less profitable to cultivate or industrialize, keeps disappearing. Their numbers have been reduced to such an extent that today not enough fruit and vegetables are produced nationwide to meet the American dietary recommendations. These following numbers are very telling: While the cost for soft drinks and sweeteners have been increasing by 20 and 45% over the time form 1985-2000 -leaving he soft drink rate even under the rate of inflation-, the costs of fruits and vegetables have been increasing by 117%, putting these items out of reach for many economically disadvantaged individuals and families.
The accumulation of business in the farming sector causes a decline in decision making about crop and methods at the farm, as the efficiency and profitability for the shareholders are replacing the former decision making power of the farmers. Decisions are not made under the perspective of farming, but are replaced by a mentality whose sole motivator is a monetary one. Local farmers still exist, but they are -left in the ditch without financial encouragement from governmental source- struggling to make a living. Some try to survive in coops, finding ways with local retailers to market their products. However, they are in for a hard and endless struggle against imports of other countries that specialized, because of their climate conditions in certain crops of vegetables and fruits competing with the local farmers.

What is intrinsically short sighted from the government perspective is that the subsidization is turning their nation into a giant health-care wasteland, and that the costs of health services, related to the epidemic of obesity, are draining the couture's resources from the other end. The profits made by the agar sector are, however, not subsidizing for this damage, but end up in the pockets of selected individuals, whose powerful lobby keeps the flow of more subsidiaries coming. The only way to change these developments in my opinion is to boycott as informed consumers the products that make us sick and that live off this cycle of greed and profit. This takes, however, well informed and educated customers who are able to pull -through their buying decisions and their voices at their local grocery stores- the healthy foods back into the market. It takes people who are ready to abstain from TV-dinners, snack foods and fast-foods as well as restaurant chains, which are mostly supplied with ready to feed meals by centralized suppliers under contract with their head quarters, which basically prepare TV-dinners restaurant style, still high in unhealthy fats, sweeteners and starches, for the sake of the taste. It takes consumers, who are willing to involve in the process of reconditioning of their taste towards natural flavors, abstaining from the all present artificial and natural flavors in foods. As long as we train our bodies to like artificial tastes, we might not find the natural tastes of fresh food appealing; this is especially true for children, who sometimes grow up not even knowing about the wide variety of fruits and vegetables available to them.
As a business owner of a restaurant in East Nashville, I was glad to witness the efforts to turn this area into a walk able neighborhood with an increasing number of bike lanes that I personally enjoy using for my work outs.  It is encouraging to see people organizing community activity programs and mobile markets that make fresh local produce available to the residents here. I can also bear witness to the positive changes of awareness over the last ten years, when it comes to healthy dietary choices and interest in what actually goes into the food people consume; many of my customers cannot eat certain foods, because they got sick from what they used to eat. There are so many things in our foods today, that we do not know about, that are even banned in other parts of the world, and we are unaware of their effects on our health; these substances are added to our foods for the same purpose that starches, fats and sugars found their way in there, they are cheaper than the natural alternative and they are used to enhance the flavor of foods making them more palatable, while at the same time condition us to prefer their artificial taste over the natural one. This is an important factor often neglected when speaking about commercialized foods and this aspect has only found little attention in the public.
I agree however with that in the fight against obesity, efforts need to be undertaken on several levels - political, communal and individual - to correct this situation, and that it is important to involve all of them for an optimized result: to prevent a nation from falling further into states where their quality of life is severely affected by their body weight and the consumption of foods at their disposition.