Fat Matters

If you follow the news, you would have heard the new regulation by the state of Alabama towards the medical insurance sponsored through the state. In the state of AL health insurance is wrapped in benefits package for all the state employees, the state intends to start charging $25/- from 2010 incase the employee doesn’t maintain the acceptable levels of BMI( Body Mass Index), glucose levels and blood pressure.

It should have taken some realization at the gov. level to come up with something as unflattering as pointing at obesity and saying “this is not acceptable, something needs to be done”.

Hard to believe that this is the very society that scrutinized its immigrant population for psychological and physiological disorders in the new wave of 20th century immigration and the ones found unfit weren’t allowed to enter, when the early burst of immigrants started coming. The idea behind it might have been to create a gene pool that is sturdy and resilient. It took only two generations for this theory to back fire and today we see an overtly fat America to a point that being fat is no more an exception in the crowd but a lean build stands out from the crowd.

In my opinion penalizing for being fat is not the solution to this. There has to be community awareness on the same. The society in general should be made to think different and educated better in health awareness. In an economy where we find a Mc Donald’s, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks in every corner. It will be very difficult to expect the health of the population to be anything but deteriorating. There’s not one thing in the menu of a fast food joint that enhances your health (except for the salad and fruits they started adding to the menu!).

Our health is directly related to what we eat it is as simple as that. We live in a time where in fast food is the cheapest food and canned / frozen food is the easiest way out. Everything that is used in the fast food industry is questionable right from the saturated oil that things are fried in to the nuked lettuce that is served as healthy alternative!. Canned and frozen foods are no exception they have added preservatives for higher shelf life. All these contribute to your health and not always on a positive note. Over a period of time when you consume these foods it is the very next generation that you give life to that’s hardest hit. Today for the first time in history of this country the current generation has a lower life expectancy than its previous. This is a very serious matter and every one of us should take time out to scrutinize what we eat, how we eat and how much we eat.

As said earlier there are lot of factors that contribute to being fat – take any first generation immigrants in this country, no matter which ethnic population you take into consideration, there will be next to nil obesity. But the second and third generation of the same population will read very high levels of obesity. Which in turn forces me to state “may be it’s not the people, it’s the way of life in America that nurtures us to grow FAT.”

Lets try to analyze the above said by starting with veggies.

Today’s vegetables:

To achieve economies of scale a farmer today cannot conceive farm worker based model, as has become economically non-viable to survive global competition. This forces the framer to lean towards mechanized farming. The only thought that comes when we use the term mechanized farming is may be tractors, sower and harvesters. But the fine line that transpires to mechanized farming is GM or Genetic Modification. The reason mechanized farming is not possible without GM is – the machine does the same job repeatedly without error as long as the one operating it knows how to use it. But for a machine to work repeatedly and produce results it becomes increasingly difficult if the products are all not of the same size / shape.

I will take the example of tomatoes – I am not sure if anyone in America has ever had a generic tomato but if you have had one you will be able to distinguish the taste , texture and the quality of the generic kind to the numerous kinds we get in our grocery shops. The tomato cultivation/production in America would have seen its death along ago if it was not genetically modified to achieve most of the following:

- the fruit stalk ( the connection between the fruit and plant ) was modified to accommodate the harvester. As in when the harvester shakes ( averaging 200 revolutions per minute) the plant stem, the ripe fruit would detach at this juncture( if I may say so, excuse my very poor plant science knowledge)
- the skin of the generic tomato is very delicate and the chances that the fruit will survive a harvester at 200 rev/min being very slim the skin was GM’ed to be thicker.

These are just some of the changes – apart from these, modifications take place in terms of resilience to diseases, to reduce production of a particular enzyme to increase shelf life etc etc etc.

What I am trying to get at is – if a readily available and widely used fruit / veg as tomato could under go so may GM’s, imagine - a simple meal in a plate, I can only hope “ atleast the water used in cooking this meal did not have to undergo GM.

We are still talking of vegetables and we are in the very first stages of cultivating it, from the time things get cultivated to the time they land in our plates – if we try to list out all the possible modern marvels that are used then I can say this – genetically mutated, mechanically picked, nuked to kill bacteria, chemically preserved, better tasting with MSG, beautified with food color and colorfully packed!

I could go on the same with meat products they pretty much go through a much gruesome processing right from birth to when they come under the knife to preservation and ultimately on to you table.

To top this list you will find that all the fast food chains use saturated fat in one form or the other to increase the shelf life of the product itself or to deep fry the gourmet 1 minute meal!

Somewhere down the line one has to realize that no matter how deterrent you are to the modern techniques of food production and consumption you chances of eating processed food are alarmingly at a very high percentage.

The good old days where there was a butcher, baker, baber in town – people bought as per the availability and the financial capability. Not every one eat a croissant for break fast, t-bone steak for lunch and cream Brule for desert. But with advent of technology we have meat being cheaper than vegetables, a latte shop in ever corner and ice cream being served in diners! All this at the lowest possible rate.

The society has come to a point where in being obese is not the mark of your affluence on the contrary being lean is possible only with a member ship to gym!

The next time you think of having fast food and soda, give it a though (if you can spare the time!) and comprehend if it is something you want into your body. You are not helping yourself or you next generation by being careless. Whatever little you can – if you make the right move, one step at a time I am sure you will change your way of living / eating.

Common Joe