Have you ever noticed that whenever the media uses pictures of fat people, it's always candid shots or they don't show their faces? Image by Brendan McDermid.
This article is your typical shock treatment. I really don't like the interpretation done by the CDC here, which extrapolates current trends in rising obesity rates about twenty years into the future. Using a pure data trend to predict social changes over time is pretty haphazard tea-leaf reading if you ask me. Will obesity rates go up? Of course, this country's too addicted to simple sugars, soft drinks, and fast food to change in the short term. Honestly, though, I expect the social cost entailed by the rising obesity issue to cause societal course correction, just like lung cancer has done (by and large) for smoking. I think in ten years, folks will be out exercising and eating better because they don't want to go out like Uncle Billy or their parents did.
On the bright side, if the United States does start to subsidize health care costs via tax paper money (it shouldn't, but hey), we could trim the fat on the budget by trimming the fat off of people (reducing the health care costs associated with treating ailments related to obesity by lowering overall obesity numbers).
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Speaking of health care costs associated with obesity...
Jesus. If you're in the hospital for an issue, and you break the MRI machine because it wasn't built to hold that much weight, that might be your first sign that you should lose a few pounds.
Just a thought; somewhere, someone has had to grease someone up to fit inside an MRI because they were slightly too big to fit. Think about that.
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Another scare tactic article. Set phazers to white. The article doesn't go into too much detail about cultural or behavioral differences in adolescents across the races, which is where I think it goes awry. I'm putting this into the bin labeled "Needs More Research".
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NPR has a stunning "Ya Think!?" piece on the link between reduced population levels of obesity and eating more fruit and fiber. Let me know when they find out the sun is a star, and is in fact in space.
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I really like the idea of growing and buying more locally, especially given the quality and diversity of foods I've seen at the local farmer's markets. The only problem that I see is making these local agribusinesses competitive with large chain stores in terms of convenience.. Farmer's markets are kind of a one day a week thing in Winston, unless you go down the highway to the big one in Greensboro.. and that's a bit out of the way just to do one's grocery shopping.
Also, didn't it seem like that article ended a little abruptly?
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