Who knew: the rich starve themselves to health and the poor eat themselves to death.
This political cartoon was drawn with a Fine Point Sharpie & edited and colored in PhotoShop Elements.
While I know this subject is a distraction for the political campaigns, I would like to know what both Romney and Obama plan on doing about the obesity epidemic. Controlling unhealthy foods would cut the long-term cost and burden on National Health Care systems like Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and Obamacare.
I am overweight and at one time weighed as much as 425lbs. I weigh much less now, but I still have a long way to go and unfortunately the foods I can afford do not help. Now I do not place all the blame on the food-industry, the over-weight like me need to try. I made simple changes that over the years have helped me lose over one-hundred pounds. Unfortunately, as the fight over Bloomberg’s soda ban, people do not want to change. Many over-weight people either refuse to change or feel helpless. The food they can afford leaves them hungry even when they overeat. Maybe this is one of those times where government intervention like what happened with Big-Tobacco needs to happen.
Related Article: Homeless and Overweight
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I think American food companies are partly responsible, because I see the same thing happening here. Cheap food is absolutely crammed full of sugar, sugar doesn’t make you feel sated, it makes you more hungry. Hence, why McDonald’s double fry their fries, so all you are left with is sticks of sugar, and hence why anyone, self included is really very hungry after about an hour of eating a 1,000 calorie meal there. Not to mention they add it to sauces etc.
Also I have noticed now, how there is too much sugar in food that is labelled “healthy”. Soups, diet ready meals etc, they swap the fat for sugar. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat, in fact you are more likely to eat less if you just swapped your low fat meals for “normal” fat meals. Fat isn’t the enemy, sugar is. As someone on the opposite end of the weighing scale, eating a meal plan to gain weight composed of healthy food is expensive, I totally agree with that.
Sugars are the enemy, fake ones included. My meal plan hardly has any, and it’s only now that I’ve started to recognise when I’m actually hungry or full, not riding the blood sugar Rollercoaster. As always, great post.
Roxy, thank you for the insight. Food companies are very much at fault. 50/50 with the eater. I might throw advertisers in there as well making it 33/33/33 and then the government: 25/25/25/25. There is a lot to say for social pressure: 20/20/20/20/20. With that estimate, is it only 20% the fault of any one institution including the consumer?
Hard to say.
I do think more needs to be done other than the food lobbies saying education and parenting is the key. Education and parenting is part of it as well (14.3/14.3/14.3/14.3/14.3/14.3/14.3), but when government, advertisers, producers and society as whole dump so much pressure on the consumer, it is hard then to assign blame.
By the above estimate, government can regulate 57.12% of the problem. Maybe government should.
The remaining 42.9% needs to make choices that will affect the future. You are making that choice. I am making that choice. What about everyone else and what about government.
Your comment is very true and I agree.
But I also think that instead of taxing fatty foods, (which they tried here with pasty’s then revoked, I think they actually realised that people would still “choose” to eat them) they should make healthier, more nutritious food more affordable. Especially fresh type local produce. Maybe make some sort of convenience health food.
I don’t “blame” anyone for opting for the “lazy” option, but I think if I was a government official, I’d want to help them be able to see, for themselves, that what media and advertisers say about diet is wrong.
It’s only since I’ve been seeing a dietitian, that I’ve unlearned all the things the media/advertising taught me about food. But as you say, I wanted to change, I wanted to get better, people can be very stubborn when it comes to food. Mostly because they probably use it as a coping mechanism, and can’t see their life without it. These people I worry about most, because they need help, but instead are going to end up stuck and being told they are “bad” for some reason for being big. That just makes it worse in my opinion. Guilt fuels eating disorders on both sides of the scale.
Down here in New Zealand this topic is just starting to get traction. Guess what? Same story from Government and politicians.
Yup. It’s the path of government is always delay, delay, delay.
Hi Aaron! I wanted to say thanks for the “like” on my blog, so I came by to check out yours and am glad I did – you’re awesome! This is a great post. Love the art, and love the words. I agree that while it’s ultimately up to us to choose what we put into our bodies, it is unfair and even disgusting how unhealthy food is pushed in this culture, and terrible food choices are often presented as healthy. Things can quickly get confusing, and the undercut prices of fast food, which do not represent the cost of true food production, certainly don’t help either. Aside from the art thing that I do, I run a holistic nutrition business as well, and your post has inspired me to write an article for my foodie site about eating healthy on a budget. Not all real food is so expensive. I’ll work on this over the next few weeks. If you want to check out what’s there so far, the site is theFeelGoodFoodies.com – either way, thanks for the inspiration! 🙂 Keep up the great stuff!
My pleasure, man. I have been trying to eat well on a budget. I try to do whole foods, but often it is not affordable. I do know some of the food to avoid. In my basic diet, I stopped eating white breads, regular pasta, white rice, cookies, candy (I still eat the occasional Tootsie Roll if some one hands me one) and sugary drinks. I also stopped consuming items that are high in salt and where I don’t recognize the label item without doing a Google search. I also cut my meat intake down very low. I hope to cut my meat and dairy down to below 5% of my total diet.
This is very hard because, this increased the amount I spend on food. Not by much, but it did. My weight loss has been slow, but steady. I feel a lot better.
No matter what I do, a lot of people either do not have the will power, the education or trust in what they are hearing when the government message is so mixed.
Things need to change. I hope things do change so the poor can afford healthy food.
Dude, kudos!! High five for all the stuff you cut out and the focus on whole foods when you can. I agree that things need to change. The norm is shifting though – the general public is become more and more attuned to healthy eating these days – and I hope I hope I hope that eventually this will influence our options for the better. Glad to hear you feel a lot better!
I don’t suppose that there are any fresh produce markets of a saturday morning near you? Its possible that that sort of thing is more European (we have a lovely one here on Saturdays and Wednesdays). The produce is fresh, mostly veg and fruit, is irrestistibly delicious and comes straight from the producers so it isn’t expensive. I can buy a weeks worth of fresh fruit and veg (for 2 people) for around 10-15$ depending on whether i feel like getting something more bizarre/unusual.
We do and I do go them. The quality is generally pretty good. I have found a lot of good stuff there. Unfortunately, I often don’t have time to get there when they are in operation.
Terrific post & art. I have a lot of catching up to do…
This is such an important issue… Back to 1984 & Brave new World hand-in-hand… Everything’s just so defunct from so many different angles.
It is and with your 1984/BNW point, it is so hard to figure out which way to turn. I almost want to go every way.
I want to head for the hills with some chickens and a pig, lol. I feel like we have a system in place that’s almost designed to keep us just happy enough that we won’t care about how we’re poisoning ourselves (physically, mentally and spiritually) day by day. ::big sigh::
I agree with you. I think the us you are talking about are the poor and the middle-class. When those two large voting blocks are kept pacified (barely), they will do nothing. The food-lobbies like it when the general population does not feel empowered to do anything like their health.