I stumbled upon an interesting article today, and it prompted me to write this post…

Diabetes demands proactive approach
Lesley Russell - The Canberra Times, 13 August 2007.

From the article:
Australia is facing an epidemic of Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes. There are now nearly one million Australians with Type 2 diabetes. The problem will grow as the incidence of obesity increases, with 30 per cent of Australian children and 60 per cent of adults now overweight or obese. The rate of diabetes among overweight adolescents has jumped 16-fold in the last decade.

Read the full article here http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?story_id=1036228
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My opinion:
People are being conned into buying the wrong foods. Indeed, what the food corporations get away with is criminal.   I’ve recently targeted Kellogg’s as a main offender, but there are many more who claim their products are healthy when clearly; they’re NOT.

Foods that have a high GI rating (such as breakfast cereals and bars) are aggressively marketed as being essential to our staple staple diet.  This is wrong… terribly wrong.

It seems to me that the only people who are healthy these days are those that are; vigilante about their health, genetically just lucky, or those that are shaped by environmental forces (physical work etc).

Mass marketing is becoming more omnipotent, subtle, and unethically pervasive.  And in fact, they’ve mastered the art of telling lies, they’re the best.  They are responsible for the epideimc of diabetes to a degree similar to that of tobacco companies being responsible for cancer.

I’d like to be clear about this…
MARKETING AND FOOD CORPORATIONS ARE KILLING US…
THEY CARE ONLY FOR MONEY, NOT HEALTH!

So how can we blame the average person in entirety, for their obesity?  When clearly, they’re being told every day to eat, eat eat!  And further to that, our modern lifestyle encourages sedateness at work and at home.  In my opinion it’s a miracle that we all aren’t obese and diabetic.

It’s tempting as a fit person to sit back and say “oh they eat too much” or “they don’t exercise enough”, or even “they bring it upon themselves”.  But, if we think for one second that society makes it easy for these people, we better think again….

I think that it’s heartless and cowardly to take the moral high ground (the last resort of a scoundrel) by blaming fat people for their obesity without giving any thought to the pressure society puts on them to eat and drink.  Yeah, people are responsible for their health, no doubt about it - but some people have a harder time than others when it comes to displaying the increasing vigilance required in order to avoid obesity.

If we are to truthfully (and pragmatically) allocate responsibility for the epidemic of obesity; it would be ludicrous and small-minded to ignore the effect that mass marketing has.  The days of blaming “joe citizen” for his/her own obesity and indulging in a sense of superiority because others are fatter then ourselves is nothing short of a cop-out.

I aim to help obese people - because I believe they are an accurate depiction of what modern society does to a person, in essence; the default model.  If you study the migrations of indigenous people into Western Culture, you will find facts that outline their rapid descent into obesity (and depression).

Modern society is an unnatural environment, and it requires an unnatural amount of vigilance in order to to survive in it, let alone subsist.  Many times when I see an obese person I just want to liberate them!  I know I can help them, but sometimes I think “how can can I compete with the likes of McDonalds, Kellogg’s, Coke-a-Cola” ….and so on, and so on.

For every one of one of me that is saying “I can help!” there are a thousand advertisements saying “have a Mars Bar”.

In conclusion;
Food Corporations need to take responsibility for their role in the community, get honest, and say; “hey, our food will make you fat, go easy on it okay”.

Tobacco companies are forced to do provide warnings on their products, so why shouldn’t Kellogg’s or McDonalds or Coke-a-Cola be forced to?  I don’t like the idea of forcing things on anyone, but we’re dealing with a well organised, well funded and incredibly self-servant beast here.

Obesity is a not just a battle of the will, it’s a battle aimed squarely at the heart of consumerism itself… and it’s not going to be easy… but hey, nothing worthwhile ever is, right?