“Demanding greater personal discipline, now matter how seemingly obvious, will never win the obesity war; that’s why the food industry embraces it.”

I agree that our “war” against obesity must address more than the individual, but at the same time, we should not give a free pass for ignorance.

At some point, the individual must take responsibility for his or her actions. That is not asking too much of an adult in our world today. No one forces anyone to eat anything. Some of us choose to educate ourselves, while others remain ignorant and unwilling to change their lifestyles. Should we just look the other way? Of course not! We need to target the “attack” in multiple directions (one of which IS towards the individual).

No one wants to place the blame in the mirror. It must be someone else’s fault.

This IS one of the problems in our world today (which goes far past the problem of obesity).

Ross

Take care
Tony

Is such a rapid and wide spread rise in obesity explained by a sudden failure in personal responsibility? The growing multibillion dollar fitness and diet industries would suggest that most people, no matter how ineffectively, are trying to avoid the health, social, lifestyle and economic disadvantages of obesity.

Is the blame for the nation’s obesity epidemic due to our sedentary lifestyles? If so, why does Japan have obesity levels of only 2%? The Japanese live similar modern sedentary lifestyles; and only 3% of the Japanese report exercising twice a week or more, less than half the American figure.

The blame, I’ll poke, lies primarily in the unethical and under-regulated food industry, where cheap and addictive high-calorie commodities like sugar are used as bulking agents, where the nutritional value of foods have been dramatically reduced through factory farm and processing practices, and where aggressive marketing practices have been exploited to mislead people into making poor choices and encouraging them to over consume.

Let’s talk strategy. Personal responsibility is an important and empowering message, in fact the only option available in today’s status quo – but the rhetoric of personal responsibility is subverted by the food industry to divert attention away from themselves. Food manufactures and retailers love this argument. With a moderation message they use it to defend themselves against regulation and criticism. So here’s my suggestion: if you really want to tackle the obesity epidemic it’s not productive to beret the discipline failings of sugar junkies, instead aim your punches at the food corporations. Given the relationship of food to health, our communities have the right to demand that food manufacturers and retailers act in responsible ways in exchange for the right to trade and make profits. Without the hope of political leadership on this issue consumers have to take actions into their own hands and boycott irresponsible manufacturers and retailers. Our communities health is being sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits; only an attack on corporate profits can safeguard the health of our society. Demanding greater personal discipline, now matter how seemingly obvious, will never win the obesity war; that’s why the food industry embraces it. Focus your attack Ross, and aim your powerful punches at the right target. A consumer boycott is how to get a KO.

http://rosstraining.com/blog/2007/01/30/unhappy-meals/

Thank you again for sharing,
Ross

I thought you might be interested in the attached article on Nutritionism. It’s a piece by Michael Pollan (the Knight professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley) in the NY times is worth a read http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ei=5070&en=c68ce221c481f56b&ex=1171083600&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1170931106-BHtqW94vxD4JdzI8N5ELJg

Keep up the good work

Rannoch

So what will we see in the coming months/years?

1. people will take the pill, but not the vitamin;
2. their bodies, becoming malnourished, crave more food;
3. they eat more than they were before taking the pill;
4. reported efficacy drops–prescribed dosages (and/or self-administered dosages) increase;
5. malnourished, over-doping patients start having health complications that may have to do more with their lack of conditioning and malnourishment than the pill; but
6. some lawyer will get hold of this and claim that the pill is causing the health problems. Then, of course, class action product liability cases follow.
7. Meanwhile, the overweight patients come off the pill, do not change their (increased) eating habits, and the health care system lurches a big step closer to collapse.

Hm. I’m usually not this cynical until Friday. I must be hungry.

I think I’ll buy a little GSK stock now, then sell it in about 4 months before the lawsuits start. It’s going to sell BIG until then.

One of the side effects are some type of gastric discharge, or something like that. Even so, it will be a huge seller and more and more people will “fake” their way to health, rather than doing it the real way.

Tsk tsk tsk.