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Obesity crisis in America – where is the focus on nutrition?

Much ado has been made of the fact that obesity is a full-blown crisis in America.  Turn on the news and in any given week it seems like stark statistics are being presented:  33% of American adults are obese.  68% of Americans are obese or overweight.  20% of American children are obese.

Given the relationship between obesity and other chronic health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart failure, these rates are indeed frightening to consider.  It’s been widely acknowledged that today’s generation of children are poised to be the first in a long time to have a shorter average lifespan than their parents.

Clearly, there’s a lot of bad press about obesity.  So much so that it’s not even ‘news’ anymore.  However, there is good news: there’s no shortage of attention being paid to the subject.  Many people and many organizations have taken it upon themselves to address the rising tide of obesity.  Consumer empowerment is on the rise; for example there have been laws passed to make caloric information available to consumers at the point of decision-making.  Attention to the fact that people aren’t getting the proper level of activity is also on the rise.  As just one example, the First Lady has made it a personal mission to address obesity by getting kids moving.  After decades of budget cuts to school sports programs, physical education, the elimination of school recess, even things like unsafe neighborhoods for kids – we have a lot of ground to make up.  But at least there are signs of progress.   This must continue to accelerate – otherwise our notoriously short attention span as Americans will be a death knell for the little process that has been made.

Where I personally would like to see more attention paid to address the obesity epidemic is on the topic of nutrition.  After all, we ‘are what we eat’, and getting people to be less sedentary is only addressing half of the problem.  The other half of the problem is that the food industry has realized that there is a large portion of the population who will gladly spend their money on nutritionally deficient, yet calorie (and sodium!) dense “convenience foods” in lieu of fresh, nutritious, natural foods.  As a society, we have become dependent upon convenience in all areas, and our food has become no exception.  Our ‘nutrition/value’ barometer is all out of whack.  After all, how can we honestly expect to pay $1 for a nutritious hamburger?

We need to re-educate people that good nutrition doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of convenience.  Until we break the trend of reliance upon convenience foods, obesity will continue to be a problem that we address after it has arrived.  We need to stop treating the symptom and treat the cause.

© 2010 medullan | blog.