Original Post by supersized:

What we do need to think about is how far we're willing to push individual freedoms to allow ourselves to ignore a social epidemic.

Conversely, is this comment suggestiing that we should also look at how far we're willing to limit individual freedoms to adress a social epidemic?

"Pushing individual freedoms" is not what is making Americans fat.   It seems to me to be a lack of education combined with a society that, due to technology and other factors, increasingly has more time for non-active recreation.  Look at how many people have no idea what the food pyramid looks like, or how many people lined up outside stores to get the newest version of "Grand Theft Auto."

As for packaged, processed, and junk foods - yes, they contribute to the problem.  But a person can still get fat eating "healthy food" too.

No this is not meant to be a lead into a request for more government intervention. Unlike with smoking I don't think that will actually help in this case (short of some extra education dollars).

In the case of foods you can't start a government mandated nutrition program (just wouldn't work on so many levels). 

My intention in that comment was to encourage those who are very "judge not" to look at the flaw in turning your gaze ever inward. If we keep the mentality that what everyone does so long as it does not directly affect me is none of my business than we forget that we are social creatures who are affected by our social environment.

It's seems an interesting contradiction to me that it is okay for corporations to fill up public space with advertisements and it's the individuals responsibility to ignore them. However, the individual challenging the rights of the corporations to be in that public space is all too often seen as infringing on corporate rights (business rights, etc...).

What is making America fat is a lot of things, increased technology, time in front of the computer, more commuting in vehicles, less accessibility of sports, packaged foods, fast foods, consumer culture I'm not trying to slap the label on any one thing here, what I am trying to do is call attention to the fact that it is we as a society not simply me as an individual which as a problem with health and nutrition especially as it relates to food. 

This doesn't take away my personal responsibility for trying to change my choices now, but I think it ads to my civic responsibility to look at the picture beyond myself. 

You make some excellent points, and I totally agree.  In the YOU: On a Diet book (or whatever it's called), Dr. Oz mentions some of the same points regarding how our social environment has encouraged the obesity epidemic.  I don't think the point is to blame society for making us fat, but it is critical to understand how those factors contribute to our daily decision making.  As so many people have said, until we really understand and address the factors that contributed to our weight gain, we cannot truly get past it and keep the weight off for good.

I agree that in some aspects you can not blame society for making an individual "fat" but at the same time as the levels of obesity increases, the more accepted it seems to become- and what about the children who are influenced by everything around them. Schools (most anyways) don't provide nutritious meals- a lot of schools have pizza hut starting in middle school and on top of that- many schools are cutting gym out of the programs. With more parents working full time or single parent homes with the parent working there is not much of an education for children on the side of health- and then it becomes much more difficult for the child when they become an adult to break those habits.

In a way, the beginning of obesity is society, but the fight against it is individual... 

*Hoping this made any sense...... *

Because we are social beings, it is a social problem.  School is compulsory and our kids (and us before them) are conditioned to act and believe certain things from a very early age about fitness and nutrition. 

We are influenced by example and experience so even though we have nutrition lessons and some physical fitness in school, the realities of school lunch and playground politics weigh a lot more in our psyche.  I was explicitly taught fitness techniques that were inaccessible to me and dangerous to my more athletic peers.  I could read a chapter on the food pyramid and then 5 minutes later go to the lunchroom where all of the food choices are bad for me.  They are all junk.  No lie. 

Taking it even closer to home, my own parents were kids of the 50's and were taught that pre-made food was better for you.  So, I was raised on Crisco, mayonnaise-drenched sandwiches, baloney, Wonderbread, Kool Aid in my Thermos!!!!  I came home and had Hostess for snacks and Swanson's for Dinners. 

Any wonder why it's taken me so long to unravel the poor eating habits I was educated in?  School Boards have to fight to get rid of vending machines off of campuses.  Cafeterias balk at making fresh foods because of labor costs. 

I'm much less likely to blame the fast food restaurants, especially today when they have a lot more healthy choices and you have to actually go there to eat their food.  I'm more concerned with the indoctrination of our kids that have no where to go.  How about kids that are so poor they eat school hot lunch?  My son shares his snacks with those kids because he knows he can come home and get more. 

Does anyone beyond the age of 12 really believe that hostess cupcakes are good for you?  Can you really tell me that when you were making the food choices that made you fat you thought they were all healthy?  That you couldn't tell you were getting fat and should stop? 

I certainly won't say that.  I ate stuff I knew was junk because it tasted good and tried to ignore the resulting weight.  I did very well at that.  I had to hit 200 pounds before I decided that I really needed to do something about it.  Yes, it is very easy to get fat in our society.  But it was still our choice to take the easy route.

Original Post by supersized:

Basically the overwhelming consensus became what I eat is none of your business and what you eat is none of mine. 

I can't pin point exactly why but this rang as a really bad idea to me. 

Unless you are going to buy my food, come to my home and cook it up for me, then yeah I say what I eat is none of your business. 

I see people who sit there drinking an extra large double chocolate shake and shoving a twinkie in their mouth and Boo Hooing that they are fat.  Well hello....

We all know what it really takes to be healthy, but it's not an easy lifestyle to live and they are not easy choices to make.  See my key word "choices".  It's all about will power and moderation.  You (meaning no one in particular) didn't just wake up 300lb's heavier.  No one said you had to eat at McDonalds just because it was there.  You could have replaced that twinkie with a celery stalk at any time, but it didn't taste as good, did it? 

I don't see why you had to start up another thread to talk about the same thing.  It doesn't matter to me if you or someone else is a fat pig as long as it isn't me.  It just makes me look that much hotter! 

I can't say I got fat by eating foods that I thought were healthy, but on the other hand... there are a lot of mis-leading products and labels out there and the average consumer doesn't always realize (or care) what they are getting. 

They see some box that say "1/3 less sugar" and get it thinking it's healthier, actually reading the box shows that it has more sodium, added fat, and more calories, but yes, there is less sugar. This is a specific cereal that I love... and it was a shock to me when I compared the nutrition labels.  What they were saying was technically true, but I still thought it was somewhat mis-leading.

Or my son who wanted to lose a few pounds and thought that giving up sodas for juice would do the trick.  I had to inform him that the juice he was drinking -- while without a doubt healthier -- actually had more calories than the same amount of soda.  I then showed him this site (he's 24) and told him he needed to switch to water or iced tea.

Yes, kids 'know' that something is bad for them they 'know' that running across the street without looking is dangerous, but do they do it, yes.  Do they fully comprehen why? People go through the stage of "it won't happen to me" until, what? Early 20's and beyond... so they continue

And I seriously thought that something would happen where I would "grow out of it" or something...

Once you are in the habit of doing things a certain way it is difficult to reverse and its not to say that there isn't a point where you have to take responsibility for your self, you absolutely do.....

Wow, there are some interesting and well thought out points raised here. I'd like to pick up on a couple if I may.

For a while now, I have been interested in the idea that food producers are deliberately making food addictive. I simply don't know enough about the subject unfortunately. However, there have been times when I have consitently eaten foods that I knew to be awful yet I didn't understand why I was drawn to them (my vice was McD's Quaterpounder). I did wonder if it was the salt, but goodness only knows. What else could be put in food to make it addictive? Is is simply the addition of a particular flavour? or something more?

To what extent the government should intervene to encourage healthy eating, or any other form of healthy living I have never really decided. On the one hand, my liberal views scream that it's for the individual to choose how they live and what they eat and that there should be no intervention in this, yet part of me questions the inconsistency of a government that bans public smoking, bans adverts for alcohol and adds flouride to water supplies (I'm in the UK), yet seems to happily encourage a plethora of incredibly unhealthy food chains and products. Can we honestly say that in the long run, fast food and processed food won't cause as many health problems as smoking or alcohol? As I write this, I wonder if I could eat at fast food outlets every day and adopt a healthy lifestyle in doing so. I doubt it. It seems almost everything in them is bad news. Even the salads.

It strikes me that society moves in trends. Eventually, there will be a sufficiently strong backlash against fast food that we will see a rise in healthy food outlets. Just as smoking now makes you a pariah, alcohol will follow and eventually certain foods - though perhaps not pariah inducing, at least frowned upon. I guess the biggest problem is that a huge amount of people just follow the crowd and seemingly ignore the large volume of educational information out there. My concern is for the millions of kids who are growing up thinking that fast food restaurants are the norm and should be visited at every available opportunity. When I was a kid, the peer pressure was all about trainers, but not going to McDonalds makes you weird nowadays! I work as a lawyer specialising in child law. It seems that in almost every case I see someone asked what they do when exercising contact with their kids, the answer is take them to McDonalds. Nobody bats an eyelid! Just once I'd love to hear someone say, we cook a meal together. Of course they also say he/she plays on the Playstation, when I want to hear about trips to the park but that's a different story! 

Am I unusual?

For me, it's when I am happy with life and content that I put the weight on! It's  when things are miserable that I tend to turn to exercise and healthy living! I generally see it as something to through myself into I guess.

"Does anyone beyond the age of 12 really believe that hostess cupcakes are good for you?  Can you really tell me that when you were making the food choices that made you fat you thought they were all healthy?  That you couldn't tell you were getting fat and should stop?"

As I've discussed on other threads, I was underweight until I was in college.  I was raised in a very authoritarian household, I'm still working on getting the bad mental habits out of my head.  So, to criticize a child for their eating habits is senseless and cruel to me.  So, no all the junk I ate kept me thin because I was eating so poorly and had such a hyperactive system.  I didn't gain weight until I was in my late 20's and married and it was directly related to eating more and being sedentary-having poor habits. 

I can't agree that I was making any choices about food before I was 14.  I ate what I could.  By the time I was 14 and in high school, I had some serious impressions on what was okay and what was available.  I did make better choices, when given the chance.  Having the extra money to leave campus and eat healthy food elsewhere was part of that.  But there were lots of kids that weren't so lucky.

I don't think that comment was meant as a criticism of children's eating habits, more a suggestion that once you reach a certain age you know what is good and bad in food, be that 12 or 14 or whatever. It is largely dependent upon what education you have had though. The vast majority of 5 year olds would know that eating chocolate all day is bad for them, they still would though if given the opportunity.

I just wrote a 30 page paper on this! Kind of, it was on Cardiovascular Disease, but still. And no, for your own sakes I will not post it. ;)

But obesity is a down right epidemic in America--we all wonder how it happened, but when we look back at the history of industry, it all makes sense; we wanted to see more of everything, faster, and for cheap. If you are looking for a good read (and quick, I promise), check out Fat Land by Greg Critser. It summarizes how we became a nation obsessed with food. And not only that, but how obesity has somehow become an income issue. You would think that low-income families would not be able to afford all they can eat, but remember all those lovely fast food places you just named? How expensive is the dollar menu? You can feed your entire family for under $15.

It's terrible. It's sad. Especially when children are showing signs of "adult" diseases, such as diabetes, and some are even dying of heart disease.

Edit: Also, a lot of people who become obese are not very well informed about proper nutrition and exercise. Many schools are not required to teach physical education. Overweight children are almost 2/3 at risk of becoming obese adults. It's cyclical

First post on this forum!

I'd just like to add that although individuals have the ability to make choices those choices are heavily influenced by advertising - if they weren't then companies like macdonalds wouldn't spend huge amounts of money advertising. Which implies that advertising works at a different level to just conscious choices (why ban smoking adverts if they are not going to cause non-smokers to start smoking). So as long as big companies are trying to make more and more money they will use advertising to sell more of their product to customers, so not necessarily just an issue of conscious choice.

I actually read everything posted here, my immediate opinion is, it's my own business, as well, I am very out of touch with my sub-conscious.  I don't have cable, I do not have to see a burger king advertisement for years, but I still want it everyday.  I believe advertising doesn't make me go buy something, I believe that for CERTAIN products advertising is meant to let me know it exists.  For example, there's a new radio station in town, now I actually heard about it through word of mouth, but if I saw a banner then "oh, I know that's there".  Now this differs from McDonalds because I know it's there, they don't have to advertise to me, I'll go there when I want to. 

I live in Canada, when I was 13 and weighed 140 pounds or something, I was the second fattest child in a class of about 250 students.  For most every class I was in, I could look around and state "I am LITERALLY the fattest person here ..."

YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FRUSTRATING IT IS TO HEAR IT'S AN EPIDEMIC THAT PEOPLE ARE GETTING FAT WHEN YOU'RE THE FATTEST KID IN ALL YOUR CLASSES AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN MORBIDLY DISGUSTING OBESE?!?!?!

Every girl was a stick.  No lie.  So up here we're doing pretty good I think. 

Now,

"YOUR eating habits and YOUR exercise habits are not my responsibility"

guess what? YOUR IRRESPONSIBLE SEX AND YOUR ACCIDENTAL PREGNENCY ARE NONE OF MY RESPONSIBILITY.

I still pay welfare ... the fact people can't get jobs, I have to work to dish out money for them.  I'm forced into doing A LOT of things I really don't want to do.

So I don't really care what the stances are, Earth will explode, and all our bickering and concern would have been for nothing, and if it just so happens that we know earth will explode in say 5 hours ... all those girls who spent years dieiting will probably run to get a butt load of big macs, fries, chips, chug down soda, and get drunk or something.  Even since that isn't the case, we're all going to die o.o;

So I had the idea, what if we had a superstore ... or any huge grocery store, but it didn't serve anything that's obviously an unhealthy choice, what if it only had vegetables and fruits, certain breads, certain meats, let it stalk all those healthy versions of "unhealthy" snacks.  The outcome would be, if people decided to go there to shop, then there would be no distractions, if you actually supplied them with everything they needed ... I can goto a marketplace but so long as I have to goto stuperstore to get my super-duper awesome healthy popcorn, I might as well do an extra load of shopping there while I am there.

the short simple answer is it's a debate ... that food tastes really good ... but I'll gain weight ... it's a dillemma, and it's time to make a choice >:D

Re: post #3: And I see no civic responsibility to look beyond myself (and my children). We are each responsible for our own actions or lack thereof, and YOUR eating habits and YOUR exercise habits are not my responsibility (and none of my business).

Wow! I haven't read too far but I already have an objection. We all share the same environment, this planet we call home. It is absolutely my civic responsibility to look beyond myself and my 'nuclear family' to the entire planet. I don't eat organic, recycle and drive a fuel-efficient car for sheer ego-stroking. I do it for the welfare of our planetary community. The health of our planet is greatly effected by the health of it's inhabitants. If someone doesn't care about polluting their body they probably don't care about polluting the planet. As within is without. Consideration of this planet is my prime civic duty. Every time someone buys and eats a burger from a fast-food chain, they are supporting the decimation of rain forests for cheap cattle-grazing. Whenever someone buys a pint of ice-cream they are helping one of the largest contributing industries to global warming, dairy. Whenever someone buys individually wrapped cheese food product they are including themselves in the equation which necessitates enormous consumption of energy in order to process and package that product. I'm not saying that I look down on those who buy these and other similar products and services occasionally, but consider the impact our country has on our environment, shared by the entire planet, and then consider how we got to be THE LARGEST polluting country, per capita, and still refuse to take responsibility by joining the Kyoto accord. It's this 'nuclear family' ideology that got us into this mess to begin with. It's apathy, lack of compassion for anything that doesn't affect me personally. It's an old paradigm that needs to end, now. We are a global community. What better expression/manifestation of this state do we need than the internet? It's learning better living habits to save our environment that will eventually, maybe, save us as a species. We need to wake up and shift this destructive, exclusionist paradigm.

When I fart in an elevator with you, do you not smell it?