There are many national and international charities for helping people suffering from starvation and lack of adequate nutrition. It is quite appalling that in this extremely wealthy world there are those who cannot afford to meet their basic nutritional needs of themselves and there families.There are many international charities that aid in fighting global poverty and providing food and relief in humanitarian crisis, many such charities have connections with religion. The United Nations and international agreements such as the Millennium Development Goals seek to end poverty and starvation in our world. Progress is being made, and the number of people living in poverty and unable to afford adequate nutrition is decreasing.
However there is another side to the story, in the wealthier countries, food is cheap and plentiful. Obesity and poor nutrition have reached epidemic proportions. This decade is the first decade in all of human history where more people will die from obesity related diseases than starvation.
Unlike poverty rates, obesity rates are increasing, and with them diabetes, heart disease, cancers, asthma, and other diseases. In the last 30 years obesity rates have increased from 15% to 35%, childhood obesity has increased from 5% to 15%. One would think that such a dire problem would have an equal number of charitable organizations dedicated to fighting the problem. But alas, there are very few, our glutenous lifestyle and culture is rarely seen as a major problem.
There are two parts to the problem, the first is diet. The fast food industry and processed food industry have addicted us to their food. Everything we eat has been enhanced with sugar, salt, and fat, and the nutrition has been refined to nothing. The majority of our calories come from refined sugar and fat, 95% of the flour used in America is processed white flour. We are obsessed with meat, if a meal does not contain at least two portions of some dead animal in it, we don't consider it a meal. We eat more meat in a day, than any nutritionist would recommend in a week.
Not only is the food we eat junk, but the portions are large enough to feed a family. We are bombarded with junk food and fast food advertisements, finding healthy food at a restaurant is a near impossible task. Our overweight, asthmatic children sit in front of TV countless hours a day watching commercials where their favorite cartoon figures and role models tell them how great candy, sugar cereals, and processed nutritionless snacks are. Is there little wonder that they consume close to half their calories in sugar?
The second is exercise. We are the automatic powered generation. Everything in our lives is powered by automation. We drive everywhere, technology does all of our work for us, our ride-on lawnmower cuts the grass, our snow blower shovels the driveway, our leaf blowers rake our leaves and sweep our patio, elevators and escalators take us up the stairs, even our doors open by themselves. We use the time our technology has given us to sit in front of the TV, our children play video games instead of playing outside. We think the Sony WII is a form of exercise.
Perhaps our lives have become too easy, but we pay the price in the end. We become decrepit before our time, heart attacks in our forties are common, cancers and alzheimers are an expected part of aging. This does not have to be the way, their are many traditional cultures where these diseases rare. It is true that we are living longer, but this is thanks to health care not thanks to our health. Early heart attacks have increased 20%, but quadruple bypass surgeries have increased by 2,000%. We live 10 years longer than before, but spend 15 years more in old age homes.
This is the culture we are exporting on the world. From China to Zimbabwe, we are decreasing nutrition in the wealthy and promoting a sedentary lifestyle. We need to stop this cultural recking bomb, we need to reinvent our culture and export something throughout the entire world that we can be proud of. If we first save ourselves, save the fat americans, then we can save the world.
The steps to achieve this are simple.
- Eat wholes grains.
- Eat more vegetables and fruit.
- Eat less or no meat.
- Eat no or little red meat.
- Remove sugar, salt and fat additives in our food.
- Eat fewer processed foods, and more fresh and wholesome foods.
- Eat smaller servings.
- Eat slower, have sitdown family dinners, enjoy talking more than eating.
- Become unplugged, use more of our own power.
- Walk, bike or run to work, or take the bus and get off one stop earlier and walk.
- Take the stairs.
- Play outside with our children, go to the park.
- Buy a manual lawn mower, buy a rake instead of a leaf blower, a shovel instead of a snow blower, save money and fuel.
- Join a walking group, running club, recreational sports team.
- Ensure our children play little league, soccer, basket ball, hockey, gymnastics, dance.
- Join a health club, and actually go, do aerobics, pilates, work out, swim.
But I'm not sure we can make it by ourselves, society has to change with us. We must demand it changes with us.
- Ban junk food and fast food from advertising on TV, most certainly children's programs.
- Require labeling on all junk food, perhaps skull and cross bones for greater than a certain percentage of fat, sugar and salt.
- Require nutritional information on restaurant menus.
- Remove all junk food and pop machines from our schools, serve only healthy food in school cafeterias.
- Ensure physical education is part of education, ensure that after school sports are properly funded. Reward teachers for taking part in after school sports and allow parent to also be involved, make involvement in an after school sport a requirement to high school graduation.
- Give companies tax incentives for engaging in inter office sports leagues.
Glutenny and sloth are two of the seven deadly sins, perhaps the deadliest ones of them all. Religion is about more than worshiping God, it is about worshiping ourselves, our families and our society. Religions provides a wealth of knowledge on improving our lives, perhaps we should remember this before it is too late.
