Bon Appetit?

This brings me to the subject of today’s column — the unhealthy eating habits of so many Americans these days that are causing not only obesity, but other health problems. Let’s consider some statistics: It has been reported that there has been a 250 percent increase in obesity in the United States since 1990. The Mercury News reported recently: “According to a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36.6 percent of Americans eat some kind of fast food on any given day. As the CDC warned in its statement, fast food has been linked to a variety of health problems, including high blood pressure and obesity. It also tends to replace the stuff we need to be eating more of — fruit and vegetables. ... What we should be scared of are double cheeseburgers, french fries and large amounts of sugary beverages.”

From the UCLA Center for Health Policy: “More than 40 percent of California children drank at least one sugary beverage per day in 2014 … a habit that researchers have shown that drastically increases a child’s risk of obesity and diabetes.” And reading “Time” magazine’s June 5, 2017, article, we learn that nutrition apparently isn’t all there is to the unprecedented increase in obesity. We also learn that “The old paradigm was that poor diet and lack of exercise are underpinning obesity, but now we understand that chemical exposures are an important third factor in the origin of the obesity epidemic. Chemicals can disrupt hormones and metabolism, which can lead to disease and disability. ... It is believed that weight gain is related to chemicals we are exposed to every day — things like bisphenol A (BPA) found in linings of canned-food containers and cash-register receipts, the flame retardants in sofas and mattresses, the pesticide residues found on our food and the phthalates found in plastics and cosmetics. What these chemicals have in common is their ability so mimic human hormones.”

As we all know, we are at the mercy of related corporate interests who have no goal except to produce food products that will sell and bring in more profits. Corporate interests will do anything that they can get away with and the health of those who mindlessly consume their products are the victims. And the Food and Drug Administration is sadly lacking when it comes to regulating their products.

Most frustrating is that no matter which way we turn, no matter how hard we try, there’s no way to entirely escape corporate grown and processed foods that have been so modified and adulterated that they compromise health. And the sad truth is that as the Western diet is increasingly being spread all over the world, the diseases caused by its influence will follow. Therefore, the “plague” will continue as our food becomes more “industrialized” and even more fractionated and contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, artificial colors and flavors, ad nauseum. This includes genetically modified crops and the fact that no one actually knows what their long-term effect might be.

Much more needs to be done to curb the epidemic of obesity that has for so long been featured and lamented in the media and in print. Until our government takes the health of our country’s inhabitants more seriously than the profits of corporate interests, things will not improve. As Michael Pollen wrote in “In Defense of Food” about the diabetes epidemic in the United States: “Apparently it is easier or at least more profitable, to change the disease of civilization into a lifestyle than to change the way civilization eats.”  

Since 1984, Dorothy Dimitre has written more than 950 columns for various local newspapers. Her email address is gramsd@aceweb.com.