Obesity in America

The following was written in reference to a classmate who had been inspried by an article that she had read in the Tampa Tribune to write about the obesity epidemic in America. I felt the need to respond:



There is definitely an undeniable obesity problem in the United States. I find it hilarious though that notwithstanding this problem; America offers so many diet plans and “health” foods. Every day we are inundated with ads for weight maintenance programs as well as diet foods. So, apparently, America has a problem and a solution to that problem, but citizens that don’t really want to use the solution and its associated work and sacrifices to allow for it to remedy the situation.

I am extremely conscious about my own physical well-being. I used the term “physical well-being” instead of health for my own particular reasons (I feel that I maintain decent physical conditioning, but I live far from a healthy lifestyle). Regardless, because of my personal intrigue with physical conditioning, I take great interest (and disappointment) in the obesity problem in America. I think it reflects something worse within our culture. We are becoming weak people. We aren’t just fat but we take pride in our lethargy. While I am guilty, myself, of relaxing on Sundays in front of the television with a sporting event on while drinking many a beer, eating a pizza and further wrecking all the work I have put into my body during the prior week, I still find it disgusting that we celebrate this act so often. It isn’t a bad act to take part in, but we shouldn’t be proud that we aren’t an active people as Americans. When did America morph from a country that represented the “New Deal” era of work and progress when highways and monuments were established into a county that’s only industry is service related? Where did the American laborer go? I hate that Americans love the fact that they work behind a desk. I hope this never happens to me. I become restless enough during an hour of class.

In short, the fattening of America is just a symptom of the “softening” of Americans. We aren’t the proud working class of years past. We are lazy creatures of comfort all vying for a CEO’s position of leisure and luxury. We no longer enjoy our time by hunting and camping but by playing hunting and camping games on the Play Station. It is all very disturbing and until the mindset of America is shifted back to the mass producers of our forefathers, we will always exhibit the symptom of sickening obesity.