Our Children are Fat and Someone’s Going to Pay

Today I ran across an emotional commentary regarding childhood obesity on one of my daily blog reads. It's a serious problem and while what they had to say about who's to blame will certainly piss some people off - I agree!

More on that in a moment but while we're on this serious subject, I've got to get some things off my chest.

If you think the current healthcare costs for obesity related diseases are going to bankrupt this country - well, you're right but that's nothing compared to what the future holds.

I for one would favor a return of the ol' "Red Menace" - the great Russian threat. For at least during the cold-war we believed we knew the enemy.

Today, the enemy is not simply among us, it is us.

I am certain it's not news to you that America's children are growing faster than any children should - and I don't mean up. I mean...wide, in shear mass

According to government research, 60% of children between the ages of 5 and 10 years have at least one cardiovascular risk factor and 25% have two or more... there are 3 times as many overweight children between ages of 6 - 11 as there were 30 years ago.

And also, in classic "American Style" it's time to locate the cause - to point the finger, to lay the blame. The most obvious targets to take the "blame grenade" are the fast-food purveyors and the marketers who spin their webs.

It's a tight race for 1-2 but I selected the order above given that it's the fast-food sellers who pay the marketers - that's the food chain, so I lop a little more up top.

So, our children are fat...and who are we going to blame? Well, the blog I mentioned a moment ago, Ardants says "Obesity is not marketers fault nor is it the fast-food company's. It's time to get children off their fat asses and parents involved."

The BLOGGER who prompted Ardant's thinking goes further in making a case that marketers have done a lot to support the health and well-being of children. Of course, he's from a national marketing organization.

While I wisely question to noble efforts of the marketing white-knights in their quest to make every child safe from influential messages for food, I agree, wholeheartedly, with the position here: The fast-food industry is not to blame.

I know...I know... for anyone who's seen my presentation at Integral Life Practice on the parallel progressions of fast-food consumption and our country's health care costs over the last three decades, it's got to be hard to believe I'm saying this... But I am saying it and have been for a long time.

My case is simple: While I agree that fast-food has been a scourge on our society in many ways, ultimately it is a business! And a business flourishes only when consumers support it. We must play the game for them to win...

Sure, we've been marketed to - we've been sold a bad bill of goods, but tath implies we still took our wallets out and bought it! Right.

They served - we volleyed. We've played the game, like it or not. We are not innocent victims but active participants in our own collective suicide. Not willingly but certainly not ignorantly at this point.

To point a condemning finger at fast-food for making our children fat, is like pointing blaming the middle-east for our gluttonous consumption of fossil fuel. It doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Yet, in both cases, it's what we often do.

The "golden arches," "the king"... these fast-food joints are snuggly positioned at the bottom of the valley of nutrition - the place we all land when we slip and fall, when we fail to plan, when we find ourselves, hungry, weak and craving.  They reside there, happily like a venus fly trap, waiting for our weakness to serve them.

They remain poised there because big-business is first and foremost about profits - first (not in absolute exclusion of concern). They have little real motivation to change that now... Sure, it's wise to look like they are changing things but really changing would be foolish...

UNLESS...

Unless, someone like you care a whole awful lot*...about yourself, your life and your children's life and our world. Only then will we, one by one, start choosing the freedom of healthier foods - be they "fast" or no so...

When your almighty dollar is directed elsewhere...then...and only then will things changes. Remember, the power to change the world, to create a better future, not just for ourselves but for the generation coming, is in your hands.

Keep this in mind -- and choose what you eat wisely.

* Special thanks to Dr. Suess for his inspiration on this quote (see The Lorax)