A recent study got me thinking about this topic again. This study found that drinking just 12 ounces of sugary soda a day led to a nearly 20% increase in diabetes even when factors like weight and caloric intake were taken into account. This is extremely strong evidence against personal responsibility for food choices. This study contradicts what even most health-conscious individuals believe: that a small vice was OK as long as the calories involved are compensated for elsewhere.If even health-conscious, educated people can be fooled into thinking that moderate amounts of "bad" food are OK, then it seems unreasonable to think that we can put the responsibility on the individual.
What's even more disturbing is the fact that food companies have been waging a concentrated effort to make the foods we eat more unhealthy so that they are more addictive. Michael Moss recently published a book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" in which he explains just what the title suggests. The food industry has been purposefully making food less healthy to get more people to purchase it. We all know that soda is unhealthy, but what about yogurt? Moss explains how Yoplait contains twice as much sugar per serving as Lucky Charms. You can read a review on the Washington Post that goes into more detail about just how far the food giants are willing to go to increase profits. But the point I want to make is that it's nearly impossible for even an educated person to know what is healthy and what is not. And we have to be realistic that most of the people who are at the highest risk aren't educated. An individual simply can not be expected to combat all of the deceptive practices that these giant food corporations are able to employ.
And, if you're cynical and this does nothing but make you think "What idiots, they deserve to get diabetes and heart disease if they don't realize that eating crap will make them sick," then think of your pocket book. Costs of heart disease, stroke and diabetes are estimated at $606 billion per year in the U.S. alone. And the fact is that we all help pay those costs.
Individuals are responsible for what they put in their bodies. If we didn’t want these sugary unhealthy junk, if we didn’t buy it, the corporations wouldn’t make it. This is why education on health and wellness is so important. I always hear people say healthy options are two expensive. That is bull crap because my mother was able to raise 8 children with a minimum wage job. This was because she knew how to grow her own food and feed us healthy food that was good for us. She was also very good at stretching her dollars because she always bought things in bulk. For example, she would go to a farm and buy a whole pig and it would feed my family for the whole year. A whole pig was only about $120.
ReplyDeleteI agree that education is very important. The problem is that education on food is not a priority in this country. It's great that your mom knew how to feed your family in a healthy way and she taught you these things. But I feel like you are an exception. I agree that eating healthy can be cheap if you know how to do it right, but most people don't. Until education on food is a part of what all kids learn growing up, someone needs to stop food giants from taking advantage of people.
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