The REAL Problem Behind America's Obesity Epidemic
With the rise in food supply, marketing, and government subsidies, obesity rates in America have skyrocketed. I know, this is a topic that’s talked about often. I know, most writings on this subject tend to use a lot of words to say “make sure your kids eat vegetables!” But if you’ve read this far, stick with me a little while. I’ve got more to say.
In 1960, about 15% of American adults were overweight, and about 18% of children. From 1960 to 2000, those numbers shot up to 66% for adults and 33% of children. That means that two out of every three adults is obese, and one of three children. What’s more concerning is the fact that these statistics only include the obese. In order to qualify as obese, you have to have a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 30 of more. The body mass index is calculated by comparing your height, age, and sex to your weight. For example, a man who is 6’3″ tall, 25 years old, and ways 210 pounds has a BMI of 26.2. Because his BMI is over 25, he’s overweight, but not obese. If we were to broaden our view and look at overweight individuals in addition to the obese, we would find that 65% of adults qualify, as well as 55% of children. Let me put this into perspective. The estimated population of the United States is 318.9 million. That means there are about 207,285,000 overweight/obese adults in this country.
How did we not see this coming? So much of our country lives in poverty, yet at the same time, buying fresh fruits or vegetables, organic foods, basically anything truly healthy, is incredibly expensive. You’ll save a ton of money buying family size boxes of sugar cereal, microwave dinners, frozen pizzas, Twinkies, or ordering off the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s. We’re showing zero interest in changing these things, but all up for making fun of fat people, and taking it upon ourselves to police them about what they eat and how much they exercise.
And that, everyone, is the real issue I want to address. We as a country need to be doing everything we can to lower obesity rates and make sure everyone is healthy. We can not, however, solve this problem by attacking the overweight and obese. Making fun of the chubby girl who showed enough confidence to wear a bikini to the beach doesn’t make her thinner. It makes her more and more prone to hate herself. Narrowing down our field of super models to include only the super-thin isn’t glorifying fitness, it’s glorifying anorexia, bulimia. By contrast, when Tess Holliday became the first ever size-22 super model, it was not a step towards glorified obesity. Making a statement that being large doesn’t make you worthless or ugly isn’t celebrating laziness or gluttony, it’s allowing everyone to have a positive body image, and helping people everywhere who struggle with not only their weight, but their self-image as well to not hate themselves.
Obesity can be a vicious cycle. A girl (though this can definitely happen with men as well) realizes that she’s not as skinny as the other girls, and sees that according to society, that means she’s a hideous whale. Horribly upset, she runs for comfort food, and eats more than she should. Now, on top of the self-hate that came from just being overweight, she hates herself even more for eating this much. To solve the problem, she goes into the bathroom and makes herself throw up. Thus begins the cycle. Every time she sees a beautiful thin girl, she hates her flabby belly. She’s not used to not eating, or maybe not used to eating healthy, depending on what kind of environment she lives in. Since she’s had certain eating habits her whole life, she can’t just flip a switch and go on a perfect diet, so she keeps eating what she’s served and ordering exactly what she wants when she goes out. Every instance of realizing she could have made much healthier choices sends her into a downward spiral until she “fixes it” by vomiting. Because she’s overweight, no one would suspect she has an eating disorder. Every time you see a depiction of someone with anorexia or bulimia, you see a tall, incredibly skinny girl, usually in her bra and underwear to show her ribs and hollow gut. When we think of someone who’s fat, we think of someone who’s lazy and eats all day. Someone who’s a slob, and doesn’t care enough to just get off their ass and lose the weight. So, we make fun of the fat guy ordering an ice cream cone. We tell the girls who weigh more than 140 pounds that they can’t wear yoga pants, and snicker if they dare try to wear something flattering; or we snicker when they dress casually, in jeans and a sweatshirt and no makeup, because God, why can’t she just try a little?
Yes, there are definitely overweight people who fit the stereotype, who are vocally lazy and talk about food all day, and refuse to do anything that involves exercise. Those people are incredibly annoying. And, those are the people who should receive some tough love and be told that intentionally living this way not only makes them difficult to be around, but may lead them to an early death. But the people who have weight problems because they were raised in that sort of environment, because of a thyroid problem, because they’re dirt poor and can only avoid crap food; they don’t deserve to be outcasted by a society that exiles the large yet glorifies the food that causes obesity, that uses skinny girls in bikinis to sell huge greasy burgers, or sells ironic T-shirts like these:
We live in a society with such incredible double standards. When a skinny girl stays in all day and eats chips and pizza and watches Netflix, she’s funny and cute and maybe kinda nerdy in the hot way. If a fat girl does, she needs to get off her ass and do something. So how about instead of discounting Twinkies and laughing at chubby people, how about we support organic farming and give some real encouragement to be healthy?
Obesity is the problem, attacking fat people is not the solution.
