And I will state again - it's because our kids are too inactive. When we were kids we were walking to school, playing outside until we were called in and were always on the move. Kids today sit in front of the TV and in front of the computer and if they have activities, they are driven to them, jump for an hour and then get driven home and sit some more. It's all about movement!
That's very true. I grew up in an era where there was practically no video games or internet. My boys go outside everyday for a least an hour and ride bikes or play baseball or basketball. And I monitor the amount of tv and gaming they do too. You've got to move your body!
Of course, we also eat huge amounts. It's not so much WHAT we are eating, but how much of it we are eating. We have forgotten what a 'portion' is. You realize it when you go overseas or elsewhere and see how small a dinner most people eat in other 'rich' countries.
I agree that inactivity is a huge problem. But is it the whole problem? Activity is certainly not sufficient to lose the weight once you're already overweight.
I think the food industry itself is a huge part of the problem. We buy crappy convenience food, because there's a lot of marketing out there that tells us we should, and we deserve it. And we do! We're working longer hours than ever, and most families no longer have the luxury of having one parent at home, preparing home cooked foods. So we turn to restaurants, and processed foods and turn our backs on good, real food. We've taken food preparation out of the hands of families and placed it into the hands of companies who's primary goal is to make money.
Lack of activity plays into it too. Adults rush from work to appointments and don't or can't take the time to enjoy the journey. Kids are more often home by themselves and are told to stay inside because it's safer. And what do they do while sitting around? Eat junk.
I don't know about anyone else but my wake up call was when I saw my beloved mom pass away from cancer because she took terrible care of herself. I made myself a silent promise that I would do whatever I could to lead a healthy and active life because I saw firsthand what neglecting yourself can do. I also feel better when I eat cleanly, if I eat fast food now - I feel physically sick. I don't even crave sweets anymore. I want to be fit for life and set a good example for my sons.
Last edited by fitmom; 07-07-2011 at 04:58 PM.
Reason: spelling error
Of course, we also eat huge amounts. It's not so much WHAT we are eating, but how much of it we are eating. We have forgotten what a 'portion' is. You realize it when you go overseas or elsewhere and see how small a dinner most people eat in other 'rich' countries.
I agree that we do eat way to much. And you can get fat eating healthy foods. But I don't think that's what most of the country is doing. We're getting fat eating unhealthy food. Look at all of it out there! Processed, empty calories abound at the grocery store. And they're comparatively cheap.
I don't think it's a coincidence that obesity rates began to climb at the same time women began entering the work force in such big numbers. Good food and nutrition is work. And like much of the work historically done by woman, it wasn't recognized or valued. Now we're facing the consequences of undervaluing that role.
And please, please don't take this to mean I think woman should stay home and be in the kitchen feeding their families. I work outside the home, and am in fact the primary earner in my household. I don't think I'd want it any other way. I'm just making the point that the shift in the roles corresponds to a shift in the food industry and a shift in the nation's obesity rates.
Zoodoo - I don't disagree with you - there are so many factors - SO many. When I go to the grocery store, I'm always amazed at how many processed foods I see in people's carts. WHne I go to teh farmer's market, I'll see people pick up a quart or two of berries or maybe some corn and watermelon. I go wtih a rolling cart and buy $80 worth of produce for ONE WEEK.
I think that's one of the reasons why this weight loss journey has been easier for me (this time especially). I home prepare nearly everything - our breads, all our veggies, even our pizza and ice cream. We eat tons and tons and tons of fresh veggies and fruit. My fridge is FULL every week with just fresh foods. I have one tiny bin on the door for things like mustard, sauces, etc.
We NEVER go out to eat. Last time was in um.... March I think? When I met up with a college friend who was in teh DC area. Other than that the last time before that in January for a dinner with friends from out of town. We go out to eat maybe 4 times a year.
We also spend a FORTUNE on food. I buy only organic dairy and eggs and meats. (produce and veggies I buy conventional). ANd with buying fresh, it's pricey. I spend over $200 a week for a family of 5 consisting of 3 adults, a teen and a 6 year old. And we throw away NOTHING (and all meals come from the house - breakfast through dinner). Now, we also live in the VERY pricey DC area, and that does add up fast.
Ironically, the only processed foods eaten now are by me! I buy protein bars!
Last edited by berryblondeboys; 07-07-2011 at 06:17 PM.
I'm actually going to Disney soon and I'm terrified about what my husband and I are going to eat. I refuse to revert back to our old ways, lol. I will admit it is easier if you stay at home and cook your meals. But as a full-time mom, my husband realizes that going out to eat on the weekends sometimes is a treat for me so we eat out. We've had to get very creative like: splitting an entree, asking for sauces on the side, ordering only lean proteins such as: chicken breast and turkey, having steamed vegetables and grilled things. Some of the restaurants have bent over backwards but some roll their eyes almost when we ask for things to be prepared a certain way. I don't care because eating well is a priority for us and our kids. But make no mistake, it's easier to take the easy way out and pull into McDonald's on a busy weeknight, lol.
About the walking, at least in Texas, we have so much land and you really do anything but drive to work. Well, you can. But, say you work 40 minutes drive time. Getting to work at 8am in the morning it's probably at least 85 degrees. And just gets hotter through out the day. A walk would be horrid, a bike may be better time wise but you'd prolly be hotter. It's no excuse. We just don't have towns where you can walk a couple miles. Mainly just Austin. Then yes, fried, foods, grease, sweet tea. I was raised as taters, veggie and meat. And many times meat is fried as well as many veggies. And fruits and veggies can be pretty expensive imo, especially when you're driving forever to get to a job, which again many don't have.
Last edited by ButterCup85; 07-07-2011 at 07:20 PM.
It does seem to be a combination of more food and lack of activity.
Part of the problem with walking to work or the store is that it sadly isn't feasible for a lot of people in the US. As an example of that, my last job was half an hour by car away from my home in another town over a river and past a highway. That's not something you just choose to walk to every day. My first job, on the other hand, was a 10 minute walk from my house, and I'm happy to say that most days I simply walked up. But, not everyone has that choice.
I sigh to myself every time I see the new restaurant commercial bragging about their huge portions, and their bacon-encrusted-lard-burger topped with more bacon and using cheese fried chicken as a bun. Oh. But at least there's a leaf of lettuce on it, right?!
So since everyday type of activities like walking certain places aren't a -forced- part of our day anymore, and since we're bombarded with both overly-caloric foods AND huge portions... what's a country to do? With those things combined (no we're not captain planet) it seems like it was just a matter of time before we all started gaining weight.
Especially children born in the last 10 years. This is all they've known! How much is education on the matter going to do if it's not put into practice?
From a social perspective, it's interesting that almost all of the top ten most obese states are southern states. Why do you guys think that is?
I think it's partly because typical southern food is greasy, breaded and loaded with calories. Also, healty affordable food is less available in the southern states due too often big distance for those who live rural.
Some thoughts on this:
1. Poverty. As a whole, the South is a relatively poor region in which wealth has traditionally not been very equally distributed. It's not third-world country poor (or anything close to it), but there are a lot of people who simply don't have the means to eat well (and their ancestors didn't, either).
Almost a quarter of the children in my state live below the poverty line. Even if their parents know what they should be feeding the kids (which can be a pretty big "if") and have access to public assistance and charity, they may still find it difficult to make ends meet. Also, not all food aid is healthy. School lunches here are a great example of this. They're not usually very healthy, but they are cheap because the government is not going to pay any more than it has to to feed the children of those who can't feed themselves. And even people who don't live below the poverty line might not always have as much money as they might need to feed their families really well.
That said, I think that another aspect of this problem is that people who are better off than their ancestors have tended to simply add more meat and more fat to their diet (see 2). Greens seasoned with lard and served with cornbread won't kill you, but add in a chicken-fried steak with gravy, sweet tea, and some cobbler and it'll clog your arteries.
The South does not have a uniform food culture, but many of the foodways that have developed were developed by poor people trying to make the most of what they had. Two of the main reasons that fried, breaded, and lard-flavored foods are so popular across much of the region, in addition to being tasty, are because they're cheap and filling. If people don't have a lot of money to spend on food and can't or won't grow their own, a pretty good chunk of those people are going to try to make what food money they do have go as far as they can, and they're going to try to get the biggest caloric bang for their buck. An interesting development in Southern cooking has been the development of New Southern cuisine, which seems to me to be driven by middle-class white people concerned about their health and weight and tweaking old staples to be healthier. I hope it really catches on.
2. Ignorance. Many people don't seem to know what they should be eating. I think this is (or should be) less true than it was, what with improvements in public education in recent decades, more outsiders moving into the region, and the explosion of the Internet. But there are still a lot of people who have no idea what a healthy diet would look like because 1)the South tends to be a bit insulated from the rest of the country/world and they haven't been exposed to diets other than the "traditional" Southern diet or more recently, fast food, and 2)health education usually doesn't get the attention it deserves. 1 is changing as the region becomes more integrated with the rest of the world. 2 is a symptom of a strategy employed since colonial times by a small white elite to preserve their power and wealth by keeping blacks and the majority of whites pitted fighting each other instead of the elites and ignorant of everything but what they needed to know to pick cotton, work a loom, or mine coal. The most important thing that Southern states have in common isn't their current vices or their terrible rankings on indicators of quality of life like health and education. It's a shared history of relatively hierarchical societies headed by small, wealthy elites that depend(ed) on a large and submissive labor force. Poverty, public health issues, and many, many other problems are subsidiary to that one (IMO).
I think things are getting better and more people are becoming aware of what they need to do to act in their self-interest, at least in my state. I think formal health education is probably better than it used to be, and less-formal outreach programs by community groups are helping too. Still, it's going to take more than a few decades to fix the problems created by over 300 years of (mostly) poor governance.
I also think that fewer people have the knowledge needed to grow their own food, and there's little incentive for most people who could to do so because processed stuff at the grocery store is so cheap. I think this loss of knowledge is related to changes in the region's economies. Less agriculture, more manufacturing and service jobs that require long hours and different skill sets, and increased urbanization contribute to this trend. Of course, higher wages and urbanization can also help facilitate the development of healthier societies, so it may all work out in the end.
3. Car culture. The South tends to be very car-centric. There has been little emphasis in most areas on promoting pedestrian- and bike-friendly urban environments, public transportation hasn't really caught on outside of the towns/cities (or inside some towns/cities, for that matter), and much of the region is still so rural that if you don't grow good food or live near someone who does and you don't have a car, you're not likely to get it.
4. Larger socioeconomic trends. Subsidies on certain raw materials and lack of stringent regulation on the sale and labeling of foodstuffs (or food-like stuffs), plus the increasing reach of advertisers and marketers trying to turn a buck for the companies that sell fast food and pre-packaged processed foods have made bad food choices more available and made those choices seem more desirable than ever before.
I touched on some of the negative effects of cars and urbanization above.
Again, I think this really goes back to poverty and ignorance, which the South (as a region) has in spades. People who are uneducated and strapped for cash think they're getting something they're not, and a lot of times they have to work hard to get past that, because society is not structured in their favor.
About the inactivity thing, I think one problem is that our public transportation is crap. For most people, to take a bus or a train somewhere, you'd have to drive miles just to get there. Also, like where I live, a lot of things are very spread out. My nearest grocery store is over 15 miles away. Going there every day on foot isn't doable. Ditto with work, etc. Nothing is just a couple miles away. Of COURSE there are other ways to stay active, but my point is that a lot of the day-to-day way of walking to necessary places is difficult for a lot of people to do without cars.
Edit: Oops, someone already had this point. Sorry!
I also think ignorance is a much greater factor than most people want to admit. A LOT of people don't know how to eat healthy. Yeah, I hear people go, "Come on - everyone knows to just stop eating crap." Well, I've spent time with people in areas with mediocre and worse schooling, and let me tell you that most of them have very little if any clue that the stuff they're eating is bad for them. A lot of the kids in "decent" schools don't even know where a lot of foods come from. And no one is teaching them. And if they don't know something's wrong, they don't realize they have to fix it. It's very sad and a difficult thing to fix, as it's somewhat tied into national education (which is a mess...).
Also, does anyone know if the rates of obesity/overweight is rising significantly? I'm not sure if someone already said it...
Last edited by LiannaKole; 07-08-2011 at 12:26 AM.
I am in the South as well. I also find obesity to be more accepted in some of our cultures (yes, there is MORE than one culture in the South) than in others. I can tell you there are *definitely* more women in my area with eating disorders than are overweight. What are deemed as societal norms definitely have a bearing on BMI's. When you are surrounded by very large people in your family and community, being morbidly obese doesn't seem so striking to you. Likewise, when you are surrounded by size 0-2 blondes, it also influences you.
The south also has a HUGE influx of immigrants from South of the border not seen in the North/Northeastern portion of the U.S. Due to lack of education and funds the group (as a whole) seems to struggle with maintaining healthy weights as well.
Last edited by Thighs Be Gone; 07-08-2011 at 12:51 AM.
Isabella Olivia, regarding obesity in the south....
I think another MAJOR aspect is culture, specifically how they spend free time. The top states (all Southern) have a VERY different culture than the bottom states (D.C. and Colorado).
I am from.... drum roll please... the state ranked THIRD highest in obesity rates: Tennessee. I have lived in both Colorado and D.C. and the difference in culture is striking.
In the South, time and activities revolve around getting family together to visit or watch SEC football. ALWAYS over food. Huge BBQs and cookouts, family "suppers" on Sunday afternoons, you name it, we have a reason to get together and stuff our faces silly. In my twenty-five years as a Southerner I can count the times we got together with family or neighbors to do something other than eat, visit, and watch Vols football (though it does happen of course- going to a play of a cousin's, visiting a zoo, etc... it's just unusual).
In places like Colorado it's about activities. People plan their weekends around hiking, climbing, camping, skiing. As many conversations as Southerners have about when and where the next family get-together is, Coloradans have about the opening of ski season or the 5.12 climb they just topped.
In D.C. it's about career and productivity. Free time is spent networking or doing "productive" activities- reading the Economist, going to Pilates, attending a networking event, meeting a new friend or contact over coffee. Free time is usually not "wasted" on things like sitting around watching football with family over chicken wings- it revolves around doing something that is going to edify yourself personally or professionally.
So again, it comes down to how people spend non-work hours and what activities and priorities dominate them. I love the culture of the South that revolves around neighbors and family, but I would love it more if it could include a bit more of the activeness of the Colorado mentality with the productivity and self-improvement focus of the D.C. mentality.
I know these are GROSS generalizations, but having lived in all three places I have somewhat of a privilege to draw such sweeping distinctions between them right
