Starvation / obesity

Obesity stems from the anxiety of modern life as well as poor quality food. Starvation stems from the anxiety of sub-modern life coupled with a shortage of food/resources (inducing reproductive frenzy and hence, a further shortage of resources).

What it says is that we're all anxious. And that we all have a fear of starving. In some societies, hyper-reproduction is the only answer (i.e. fattening up the whole of society) but others have the luxury of individual fattening.

GARAK: "Fear of starvation amid plenty. It points to some dark secret hidden in the human soul. A gnawing hunger. Perhaps someone should do a study." -Star Trek, DS9

Poor people can't afford food, rich people buy too much food.

Buy a sense of humor, chuckles.

Achun,

No one wants to hear the answer regarding Obesity.

(pardon my typing, I'm dealing with kidney stones on both sides and a massive does of painkillers)

Fat people are generally embarrassed to be fat because it's one of the few areas left where people can be cruel to others without an outcry. Fat people have bought into the BS spread by people who have no idea what it's like to be fat. Those same people who think being obese is about over eating. The same people who say "eat less and exercise" will fix it when obviously it does not (exercise and fitness awareness has risen sharply in the last few decades right along side obesity, so something is off).

It's an epidemic because obese people don't know how to fix it while at the same time people with lucky genes, upbringing, and availability of healthy foods have no understanding, sympathy, or mercy about it.

Face it, obesity is caused by a blend of things:

1. Genetic factors (yes, this has been scientifically backed up so many times it's ridiculous). So for the skinny people out there stuffing their faces with pizza thinking that fat guy must each so much more than them, well, usually not. I've known so many people who have no right to be thin or healthy with the way they eat and I've known so many fat people who try to eat less and exercise and just don't shed the pounds as expected.

2. Little or No food education. How are kids supposed to know that eating pizza for lunch at school everyday is not healthy? The school seems to think it's fine. Poptarts are advertised as part of a nutritious breakfast, but they are HORRIBLE for you. They have every ingredient you could ask for to cause obesity. Did you know that you are not supposed to consume more than about 7 teaspoons of added sugar a day? Most children exceed that before they leave home in the morning for school. If not, they'll have WAY surpassed that by the time they get home from school. See, that extra sugar doesn't just cause weight gain in someone who is not active. That amount of sugar is actually a hepotoxin, so the liver and gall bladder try to protect the liver by immediately converting and storing sugar to fat. You don't get a lot of choice in the matter.

See #1 above, everyone processes these things a little different depending on your genes, which help determine your metabolism, etc. So you have two kids, both eating the same exact thing... Kid A can deal with 9 added teaspoons of sugar a day before the liver starts storing it, and Kid B can deal with 6. Kid B starts getting fatter.

Now Kid B gets made fun of and bullied, while Kid A is considered normal. Not only that but Kid A is regarded as proper, healthy, active, and respectable. Kid N is regarded as abnormal, gross, lazy, and an example of how you do not want to be.

3. Rarely does anyone sit down to a home cooked meal anymore. Even when they do, see #2 above. Do people have any idea what they are putting in their food? Not really, because the food industry does everything in it's power to conceal the horrible crap they put in food to make it taste better for cheaper.

So, for the most part we rush around looking for cheap and convenient. We're too busy and things cost too much these days ($1.50 for crap orange juice with added sugar and water, $4.50 for good stuff). Have you checked the nutrition info on Ramen noodles? It's just short of being poison.

Those health bars people eat (cliff bars, etc.) might have seemingly healthy ingredients, and some really seem to try, but if you look at the proportions, usually one of those bars has more than a meal's worth of protein or fat, or carbohydrate and people eat them like snacks.

Fruit juice? If you drink more than a glass a day, you are just filling up on sugar.

Don't get me started fast food. A Quarter Pounder + fries from McDonalds hits the LIMIT of sodium you should consume in a day. Guess what? Almost everything else out there is packed with it, including sweet drinks and things like doughnuts, so you better not eat or drink anything else except water the rest of the day.

The USA has made an industry of making you unhealthy and it's completely legal to mislead you into thinking it's not nearly as bad as it is. These companies are allowed to do terrible things to our food and divulge it in the most convoluted and difficult to understand means.

That muffin has 24 grams of fat. WOW, that's kind of a lot, right? For ONE muffin? But you've been doing good, so you cheat a bit and eat that muffin. Oh, crap, you check the nutrition information again.. 24 grams of fat per serving. Well, how many servings could one muffin be? Oh.. THREE. So there you go with 72 grams of fat. Who splits a a friggin muffin in THREE servings? No normal person. The manufacturer doesn't care. You paid for it and ate it. That's success to them. Sneak a candy bar once in a while? It's anywhere from 2 to 4 servings. They KNOW what they are doing. They know if they print it honestly, people would be less likely to buy it. So they are legally allowed to screw with you.

So, honestly, what are the alternatives? Life in the USA, if you're not lucky enough to be wealthy, pretty much demands cheap and convenient food sources.. and they're almost ALL bad for you.

Subway, eat fresh? Maybe it's better than McDonalds, but not much.

If you are diabetic, you are doubly screwed.

So, the ONLY WAY to fix obesity in the USA is to:

1. Get educated on nutrition (and I'm not even talking about advanced stuff, just basics, as in, how much sugar am I really consuming? How much is okay? What is hydrogenated vegetable oil? How much fast food is safe?) and learn to shop and cook properly. Get used to the fact that all that yummy stuff you want, you just can't realistically put in your body and expect to be healthy.

2. Love yourself first, regardless of your weight, and then resolve the make changes involving exercise and activity. Start small!

3. If you are one of those gifted people who can eat what they want, for the most part, without immediately ballooning up, have a soul and realize for some people it's the most difficult thing they will ever do.

Seriously. Scientific tests have shown that Sugar is more addictive than Cocaine*. You may laugh at that but consider very very few of us are exposed to Cocaine on a daily basis, whereas we're ALL exposed to sugar on a constant basis, in one form or another (slice of white bread? Sugar. Baked potato? Sugar.).

*
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/01/07/sugar-health-research
http://abc13.com/health/study-sugar-is-as-addictive-as-cocaine/533979/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144

So take a heroin addict who has decided to quit and have him hang around heroin all day and have his friends and family all shoot up heroin in front of him constantly, everyone on TV shooting up heroin, heroin on sale!, heroin cheaper than aspirin.. tell me if that dude is going to have the willpower to quit. No way in hell.

THAT is exactly what obese people face every day, no matter how hard they are trying (and add to it that you have a biological NEED for some sugar, so you can't just avoid it). And what do they get for failing? They get made fun of, ridiculed, thought of as lazy and gross with no willpower. It's insane and I find it incredibly sad.

4. You're just going to have to make more time to fix healthy foods. Who has the time? Well, who has the time for heart attacks, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, etc...?

It's a horrible trap that the US has gotten itself into, and frankly no one wants to get their heads out of the sand who can actually help make real changes. Every time I hear Michelle Obama and her trite little "Let's Move" campaign, I want to vomit. FAR too little too late.

By the way, there was a report done in the 60s (i can't remember the name right this moment 😞) in the US that explicitly warned the government of the upcoming obesity epidemic. The #1 cause known even back then? Sugar. Well, the Sugar lobby (which is ENORMOUSLY powerful) basically told them if they published that as is, many parties would not be getting re-elected. Instead they focused on a secondary cause, fats.

So, we got a low-fat warning. This resulted in a low-fat food craze that never quite went away (and actually helped usher in trans-fats and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which are far far deadlier than lard ever was). The only way to make food that has had the fat drastically reduced taste good? Yep, add more sugar.

So have a little care for overweight people you see and don't be a dick. They've got pretty much EVERYTHING set against them.

---- sig ---------
I'm neither a Liberal nor a Conservative... I think for myself.