US government forced to act on obesity

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1499143,00.html

West Virginia is used to indignity. Its Appalachian hills are a byword for poverty and its people derided as hillbillies. Now insult has been added to injury in what will be seen as an unwelcome first in the history of the United States.

A team of federal "disease detectives", normally sent to combat outbreaks of infectious bugs, has been dispatched to the state to chart its frightening obesity epidemic. Epidemiologists from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) have never before been deployed in this fashion, and it reflects the growing anxiety about the threat obesity poses to the health of the nation as a whole.

The health "Swat" team has just spent three weeks taking their clipboards and scales around West Virginian schools, offices and restaurants in an attempt to understand why so many of the state's people, particularly its children, are getting so fat so very fast.

"This is a team of public health professionals from CDC that are dispatched for West Nile virus and for meningitis. But this is the first time we've dispatched a team of disease detectives around the problem of obesity and it was a recognition in one of our states that their obesity problem was very large," said Donna Stroup, a CDC doctor in charge of health promotion.

[SoCalDem]

1. I'll save them a bundle of money..

Poor people eat CHEAP food..

starchy, filling foods
fatty, fried foods
cheap store bought colas
99cent menus at fast food places
frozen pizzas

poor people often lack the CASH to buy fresh veggies and lean cuts of meat (if they can even AFFORD meat)..they resort to prepared lunchmeat and canned tuna etc....mixed with potatoes or pasta or rice

These downtrodden people often are depressed emotionally, as well as financially..eating and ennui go hand in hand.

If they are not getting their needs met psychologically, is it any wonder why some would turn to food?


Gt these follks some decent jobs, and decent places to live, and you might see better eating/exercise habits:eyes:

[Mairead]

2. And right there you've summed up what the result of this study will be

if it's competent. But I'm sure other causes will be handwaved, since indicting--or even mentioning--Capitalist classism is not allowed.

[saigon68]

3. Great analysis you are spot on.

I wonder if they will stay in $300.00 a night suites, while completeing their "study"

[Theres-a]

9. With fresh broiled seafood and roasted veggies,no doubt

[zalinda]

4. Add stress to that mix

and you're spot on. The stress hormone tells the body to store fat, rather than burn it. Plus, the poor nutrition certainly doesn't make you want to jump up and exercise any more than necessary.

As a poor person myself, buying 12 boxes of mac and cheese for $3.99 is a godsend. It fills the belly on the cheap. Compare that to chicken breast for $3.99 a pound and you'll see the problem. Fruits and vegetables have been getting more and more tasteless, or have to eat them right away before they spoil. And when you're poor, you can't waste food, so buying something that may be thrown away is not acceptable. Besides, survival is higher on your list rather than nutrition.

Plus, it may be that you eat more when your body is not getting the correct nutrition.

I certainly don't have a solution.

zalinda

[cap]

5. fruits and veggies are more tasteless because

conglomerates are driving out local farmers who got things fresh. Try buying things seasonal. What state are you in? There are CSA's that do fresh fruits and veggies averaging out about $20/week for a family of four. www.localharvest.org for more info.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. Bingo.

[cap]

6. how about returning phys-ed classes...

and recess?

[BiggJawn]

7. And there will be NO mention of how much HFCS they eat there.

Poor people eat poor food. I used to be trim when i was making good money in the 70's. Then along came Ray-Gun and all i could afford was beans and cheap meat. I ballooned to over 300 pounds, the stress of making Shit Money added to that, too.

It's the High Fructose Corn Sweetner, too. It's not natural sugar. It doesn't signal the brain that the body has had enough, so you eat and eat until your gut hurts, THEN you realize you've had enough...It's also the root of the diabetes epidemic in this country, too. But the Government will not say a THING about it, because "Important People" make money off of it, like Rumsferatu and Aspartame....

[Barkley]

8. Q: 'Why are people, particularly children getting fat?' A: fast foods

Work and play have changed.

It use to be that people would get a exercise when they went to work.
Now with service jobs people have to pay in terms of foregoing leisure in order to exercise.

For kids, a similar problem arises. They now have video games instead of playing games outside all day with other kids or riding bicylces. Plus there are more fast food resturaunts.

[DARE to HOPE]

10. This is a macro problem, not simply a micro problem....

1- Change all the oils--in baked goods, movie popcorn, fried chicken etc-- to coconut oil (NOT hydrogenated) and the population will automatically start to shed pounds, have more energy and be healthier in general.

2- It was the change in our food supply, a government responsibility, not only added sugar, but the fats. Beef, dairy, and butter grown on grass produces more omega-3 than omega-6. Grown on corn and soy ever since WWI and that ratio is reversed. We have been buying Irish butter and it is so yellow and full of omega-3 and vitamin A. When you look into the history of all this you find that they actually fed ill people the Butter Diet in the old days.

So much of what poor people eat today actually CAUSES disease. Vegetable oils can bring about diabetes in as little as two days! And the fractionated milk proteins in dried milk and dried cheese (as in Mac & Cheese) are not at all safe.

[bemildred]

12. "Forced"? Forced my ass, another dumbshit distraction. nt

[Jamison]

13. Working too much can cause it too.

I know this firsthand.

Up until about a year ago, I was working 80-100 hours a week, with usually only one day off a month just to make ends meet. The stress of doing this plus the fact that I never had any time to excercise caused me to blow up like a balloon. When all people are able to get by just fine on one 40 hr. a week job, I think obesity rates could go down a bit.

[bemildred]

14. Yes, I've been there too. Especially when you travel a lot.

It's very hard to control your diet on the road, when you
have social engagements, when you are pressed for time.

But the government could give a shit about us citizens when
it isn't belaboring us - playing "Big Daddy" - lecturing
us over this or that "abuse" we are committing against our
self-apointed masters.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

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[Wright Patman]

16. You got me to thinking

with your use of the word 'recruiting.' It could be that the West Virginians who used to enlist in our military in great numbers (e.g., Lynndie the 'leash girl') are hearing about what the GIs have to eat.

Fast food withdrawal is not worth it, much less risking death. At least when they die, they want to be chowing down on their favorite entrees from KFC/Taco Bell, Burger King or McDonald's.

It really did occur in March 2003. I read the story. One of the young hillbilly recruits was driving in his APC toward Baghdad. They'd made it about halfway there. Asked by the 'embed' what he thought so far, he said, "These people got nuthin'. No Pizza Hut, no McDonald's. Nuthin!

[NorthernSpy]

17. this "obesity crisis" reminds me of the earlier "miscegenation crisis"...

... and its larger counterpart, the "defectives are breeding out of control!" crisis (which a brand-new science called "eugenics" was invented to solve).

In each of these panics, a subculture of affluent white decision-makers got a wild hare up its collective ass and declared war on "the ballooning populations of the hopelessly unfit". Even the catchphrases have stayed the same.

Also the same is the rationale: these defectives are a burden on society, so we're going to lauch an intervention into their lives. They clearly don't share our values, and that is intolerable. In fact, failure to value what we value -- whether it's a pure bloodline or a small waistline -- is a disease. And we're going to impose ourselves on those people and eradicate that disease.

Later, it usually comes out that the supposed "defectives" hadn't imposed much of a burden on society at all; that the crusade against them was just another outbreak of hysteria; and that the witch-hunters were self-interested bigots. But while the panic churns on, researchers dream up friendly numbers, resources are wasted, rights and dignities are trampled, pariah groups are created, and some bunch of "experts" gets rich.

Make no mistake: this action of the Centers for Disease Control will be seen by these folks as a provocation, and it's bound to hurt Democrats (public health bureaucracies invariably wind up associated with our side of the political divide); hurt fat Appalachners; humiliate the communities who suffer these intrusions by clipboard-bearing scolds -- even while this stunt helps CDC budgets, helps public health careerists who are running out of mass contagions to fight but who would rather not leave the government payroll; and, finally, this absurd crusade threatens to help those political elements that are willing to at least pretend that the dignity of rural working class people is worth a damn. And that, depressingly enough, probably isn't gonna be us.

I expect lots of harm and little good to come from this. But really, who expects anything else anymore?

What we really need is a CCOCCDC: a Center for the Control of the Out-of Control Centers for Disease Control.

[tlcandie]

18. Add that to the fact that foods not organically grown...

modified/irridated/picked before ripe/canned/boxed have almost NO nutritional value period!

Our bodies are crying out for nutrition and we eat more and more and more to feed what our body craves which is food w/o chemicals/pesticides /hormones/antibiotics, etc.

Example: I can eat a very small meal of organic food and be satisfied sooner and longer than a meal of regular food. Also, I don't feel like crap after eating the meal... as in stuffed/lethargic, etc. Also, the cravings stop when you stop putting crap into your system.

We are killing ourselves eating this crap they call food! EVERYONE should have access ($$$ & location-wise) to organically grown foods! It seems only those in larger towns and with $$$$ now have access to organics.

Very sad indeed. :cry: