Get Mad About It

You’re familiar with the question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? You can make an argument for either possibility, but you can’t ever settle it for good. If the chicken came first, where did it come from? If the egg came first, who laid the egg? That’s how I often feel when I think about obesity. Is the cause primarily genetic and biology-based? Or is it cultural, the result of what some have called an obesogenic environment?

Well, I think it’s both. It’s obvious that some of us are pre-disposed to gain excess weight and some of us aren’t. It also makes sense that having the ability to pack on a few was an advantage in the bad old days when humans lived in caves and spent most of their time searching for something to eat. In those pre-historic times, pudgy folk had a better chance of surviving a famine and, more importantly, going on to procreate. Even though countless millennia have passed since then, in evolutionary terms it wasn’t so long ago that fat was literally where it was at.

But, we also live in a modern culture that defines overconsumption as the norm. We are inundated with in-your-face food marketing and subliminal food messages on an almost minute by minute basis. Sometimes it makes me a little paranoid; are we all subjects of a mass hypnosis experiment? What other explanation can there be for those sudden midnight cravings for Cherry Garcia, or *gasp* Hot Pockets? Gee, I sure hope I don’t start craving Kool-Aid!

Even though I believe that both biology and culture have joined in 21^st century America to form the perfect obesity storm, I prefer to focus on food culture. That’s not because I think I have no personal responsibility for my weight, but rather because most of the attention in medicine and the media has been on individual solutions to the problem. We’d rather change the fat person than the culture that made them fat, even if this means changing the person literally, through the new obesity-cure darling, weight-loss surgery.  It’s rarer to hear proposed solutions for the obesity crisis that involve changing the environment. When you do hear one, what usually accompanies it?

Outrage!

Ah yes, good old outrage. Consider the cautionary tale of Michael Bloomberg, Caporegime of the Health Nanny State, and his ban on big sugar drinks. (Perhaps we should call him Cuppa-regime?) How dare he try to take away our freedom to eat what we want? A statement which I find hysterically funny, because I think we are anything but free when it comes to how we eat (see my comments above). The typical response to those foolish enough to wade into the carbonated waters of cultural change goes something like this: Keep your grubby little know-it-all fingers off of our plate. We’ll eat what we damn well please. You have no right to beat us up for our food choices. We’ll do that to ourselves in the privacy of our own homes!

Now, that makes me mad. That people struggling with their weight also have to struggle with self-blame for eating things that they were hypnotized into eating in the first place. As long as it’s all about your own personal shame – if only you had more willpower, if only you could stop snacking after dinner, if only you hadn’t eaten that BK Bacon Sundae (I’m not making this up) – you will never notice the damage being inflicted on you by Big Food. I’d rather you were mad at McDonald’s, who took a healthy food like oatmeal, loaded it up with sugar and then sold it to you as new healthy menu item. That’s just plain wrong, though I have to admit, I admire the chutzpah.

For all the blather about food and freedom, I wonder if a day will ever come when we have real food choices. By that I mean, affordable fresh vegetables and fruits. Meat that isn’t pumped up with corn and hormones. Transparency about what’s actually in all those “convenience” foods. What passes for choice now seems to me mostly a game of “pick your poison.” And I believe it will stay that way until enough people get mad enough about being hoodwinked in the name of free choice.

It’s hard to stay hungry when you’re angry.