Opinion: Obesity and Personal Responsibility
May 18th, 2008
I’m going to be ranting in this post so I apologize in advance!
Tomorrow the World Health Organisation will release it’s action plan on the prevention of chronic diseases to the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
This has again sparked discussion over what Governments can do to reduce the obesity rates in developed countries. The medical impact of obesity and overweight people contribute to many health conditions including heat diesease, diabetes, cancers and a range of other chronic illnesses. The cost of these conditions on the health system is massive.
A range of programmes throughout the world have been trialled with various levels of success. Food labelling, restricting junk food advertisements, taxing junk foods, school health programmes and a plethora of other initiatives have all been tried. However, the rates of chronic diseases are increasing along with the waist lines of many people.
One thing that really strikes me with the discussion over how to fix the problem and who to blame lies in those very questions. Why is it that we as a society need to assign blame and look to everyone else for a solution?
Government agencies have tried to educate people on diet and exercise. We all know that if you eat junk food or fatty foods, drink alcohol and don’t exercise that you will more than likely put weight on and won’t be a very healthy person.
Yesterday my partner and I went to the grocery store to do our weekly shop. We had already been to our local vegetable market to get our fruit and vegetable so headed to the store to pick up the other items for our week.
Our trolley contained items including low fat milk, tomatoes, some lean steak, chicken and a few other items for lunches. While waiting for the checkout lady to finish our shop, my partner remarked to me that the people behind us placing their food on the conveyer belt had not one healthy item in their cart. Everything was pre- packaged, frozen junk food with fatty processed snacks thrown in. Not one vegetable or natural food was in their trolley Both were overweight and looked unhealthy.
Now who do you *blame* for their food choices? Is it Government? food manufacturers? No-one forces them to fill their trolleys with unhealthy foods. People know when they buy foods that it’s not good for them but they choose to consume it on a regular basis.
People need to take responsibility for their actions. Unfortunately, we live in a society where people don’t take responsibility. We blame everyone else for the problems in the world and look to Government to fix them. It’s reactionary, it’s dangerous and it’s why we now find ourselves with rates of obesity that are just staggering.
We are eating ourselves to death. Stand up, stop making excuses, make a change and take control of your own life.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I think people should take more responsibility. And I think there is a growing awareness of that. But maybe we haven’t reached the ‘tipping point’ yet with it, where enough people both know it and are following through with it. Ultimately, I believe our whole society needs to develop a completely different way of looking at food and eating, and that will probably take a long time.