obesity and global warming

Obesity rates are climbing. Since the 1970's the population has been getting fatter year over year. Some forty years later, despite many warnings and outcries, the situation is getting worse rather than better. Obesity is now attacking the rich as easily as the poor, and children as well as adults. In many communities more than half the people are overweight or obese, raising the question of what is normal weight. Others have gone as far as blaming obesity for global warming.

All this time, various experts have chimed in with everything from genetics to metabolism, to sedentary life-styles as the key culprit. Almost in lockstep with waves of proposed solutions, studies have appeared casting doubt on the efficacy of these remedies. We hear that in the long run, diets don't work, drugs don't work, and even exercise doesn't work. So why are we getting so fat? The public is left to believe that some mysterious force is at work, something that cannot possibly be controlled, and surely something that they cannot be blamed for. Yet obesity is a strong indictment of our way of life. Not that anyone seems to care.

Unlike smoking, obesity is not susceptible to public censure. While smokers can be made to feel uncomfortable, or even downright guilty, overweight people do not respond the same way. Few of them can be shamed into eating less. Furthermore, getting rid of excess weight is more difficult than quitting smoking. While most people manage to quit smoking, leaving only the truly addicted to struggle with patches and other solutions, the overweight do not respond as well to therapy. Very few lose weight and those that do tend to gain it all back rather quickly. They can count themselves lucky if they do not end up heavier after the diet than before. The overweight are part of a growing trend. By definition trends gather followers. That is the best way to silence the critics.

The reason all the remedies fail is quite telling. Being overweight or obese is a life-style problem. It is the result of a certain way of living, a round the clock, 7 days a week, 365 days a year attack. And that is not something you can fight with a few weeks of low calorie meals, or a pill, or 20 minutes of "exercise" a day. It is like trying to fix a leaking dam by sticking your finger in the crack.

Despite all the scientific "noise" about genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, and the like there is no doubt that obesity is a direct result of our unhealthy life-style. Obesity is largely the result of cheap oil. This is not some far fetched idea or another conspiracy theory. Cheap oil enables our life-style. It powers everything from the SUV's we drive, to the fertilizer, pesticides, and farm equipment that produces our abundant calories and high fructose corn syrup. Without cheap oil, a separated pedestrian-unfriendly suburbia with its endless cul-de-sacs, its shopping malls, and its drive-through everything, would not exist.

Obesity is closely related to overabundant cheap food and sugary drinks, relentless advertising of such foods and drinks, and a total lack of exercise. The less people exercise the fatter they get. Twenty minutes of walking on a treadmill in a cozy gym do not qualify as exercise in this context. They may to the gym owners, and the treadmill factories, and the numerous other beneficiaries of the "health and fitness" industry, but these actors are no different than the fast food operators, the soda producers, or the high fructose corn syrup peddlers. They all strive for limitless consumption. Most gyms and health clubs are nothing more than a new type of supermarket peddling energy drinks, sports drinks, and candy bars.

Don't look to the government for help. Their food pyramids are concocted by industry and tailored to ensure excess production in one area or another can find the right buyers. If we have excess grains, then grains must be healthy and consumption needs to be encouraged. There is always a scientist somewhere who can bless the benefits of five servings a day.

It is easy to blame the government bureaucrats, but they have little option but to bow to powerful commercial interests. Their elected masters owe large debts to these corporate heavyweights, who financed their campaigns. So it should be no surprise that their main interest lies in promoting the corn farmers, the poultry industry, the beef producers, the dairy industry, the orange growers, and the millions of other constituents who benefit from selling excess calories to the public. As an example, Washington Post reported that the health department could not promote universal breast-feeding for fear of upsetting the breast milk substitute producers.

The government goes further than just advertising for the food industry. It also subsidizes production and consumption. From free water, to farm subsidies, to school lunch programs and aid to the poor, there are so many sponsored programs that mentioning them all would take a few days.

Suffice it to say that obesity is here to stay, and that all remedies -short of changing our way of life- will fall short of the mark. Yes, obesity is linked to pollution and global warming. It is also linked to excess consumption and waste. But rather than being the cause of these ills, it is in a weird sense, a corrective step. Because obesity has major effects on morbidity and mortality. It makes life much more expensive, thereby ultimately curtailing consumption. It makes you sick and reduces your life-expectancy and fertility.

I am sure this is not the type of corrective action many will welcome. But the choice is clear, folks. Either we grow up and do something about our way of life, or that way of life will do something about us.