The weight loss industry is supposed to be a multi-billion dollar one. There are Supplements, Pills, Diets, Diet Advice, Gadgets and Exercise Equipment and any amount of nutrition and fitness advice out there that promises us good Health, Fitness, and a Svelte Body. And yet a majority of Americans are out of shape and overweight. Why is this?
According to an old research, a valid point is made – fatness is the result of economic prosperity. And that it is – there are cars to drive us everywhere so that we don’t even have to walk to the store to buy milk and bread. There are appliances to do chores for us; washing, cleaning etc., which require minimum effort.
Jobs require mental rather than physical effort so that most of are in sedentary jobs, stuck at desks all day rather than working outside with our hands.
If people in poorer countries have very few obese people, it is probably because they have to physically work hard to put food on the table and work around the house is still done the old fashioned way.
If less activity is one reason, then so called convenience foods are another. Stepping out for a coke and burger is so much easier than cutting and chopping and then cooking up a meal.
Picking up frozen TV dinners from the supermarket and then eating in front of the TV is such an attractive option after a hard days’ work when there is neither the inclination nor the energy to cook a nutritious meal.
Opening a can of something salt and sugar and preservative laden is also easier than picking out fresh veggie and fruits and then having to cut and chop and peel.
And manufacturers depend on keeping us fat. After all there is a multi-billion dollar industry that feeds on the fat, paradoxically by promising to get rid of the fat.
It is in the interests of junk food makers, that people have large appetites and find their products tasty and irresistible and that they keep coming back for more even when they know what it does to their waistlines to say nothing of the body’s internal organs. The weight loss industry as well as the junk food manufacturers, depends upon people being obese to stay in business.
So all this has changed – lifestyles and eating habits, work patterns, etc. What has however not changed is the fact that the body is programmed to store extra calories. This it still does; even though it doesn’t need to. And that is the simple reason why we are so fat.
