Obesity reaches 'terrifying' level around the world: should food companies be held responsible?

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Doctors around the world are finally coming to realize that obesity is a "terrifying" epidemic. The unprecedented rise in obesity, especially among children, over the last ten years has everybody wondering, "What could be the cause of all this?"

Here's some insight on that: the very fact that obesity has risen so dramatically over the last decade proves outright that it isn't genetic. The gene pool hasn't magically transformed all of a sudden. Kids today have the same genes, overall, as kids born fifty years ago.

The real answer is that obesity is caused by the modern foods we eat: refined, processed foods, primarily. It's all those ingredients that have been stripped of their natural nutrition: white flour, refined white sugar, and high fructose corn syrup, for example. It's the alarming rise in the consumption of soft drinks, which are now peddled to unwary children in public schools around the world. It's the rampant promotion of junk food, soft drinks and fast food by the food industry which spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year targeting children with ads that promote disease-causing foods and drinks. And, of course, it's the widespread presence of metabolic disruptors in the food supply: ingredients that are well known to directly promote obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other diseases.

Add it all up and you get the results we're seeing today: six-year-old children with full-blown diabetes. One in six high school kids now clinically obese. Two-thirds of the adult population overweight. It's a nutritional disaster.

Modern medicine, of course, still won't acknowledge the links between foods and disease. They're desperately seeking prescription drugs to combat obesity, ignoring the solution that's right in front of us all: it's the foods, folks. The foods are the culprit here. In fact, "foods" may be the wrong word, since many of the substances people eat hardly resemble real food at all. They are processed, refined, pasteurized, homogenized, preserved chunks of something that nature wouldn't even dream of producing on its own. People stuff themselves with white bread, french fries, margarine, soft drinks, aspartame, white sugar, monosodium glutamate, loads of red meat and a hundred other ingredients that we now know promote and accelerate diseases like obesity.

What we're seeing today, all over the world, is nothing more than cause and effect. Eat disease-causing foods, and you will be diseased. Meanwhile, Western medicine is asleep at the wheel. Doctors remain nutritionally illiterate, and very few actually seek to educate patients about good nutritional habits. Even those that do are often met with blank stares by their patients: most people ignore good nutritional advice. They eat whatever they want, regardless of its health implications, even when made aware of them.

To top it off, there's a global problem with avoidance of physical exercise. People just don't move their bodies enough. They refuse to walk and, instead, buy electric powered scooters to buzz around town. They watch four hours of television every night, but won't spend four minutes doing jumping jacks. The general public doesn't seem very interested in taking care of their own health, and they'd rather turn it over to pharmaceuticals and medical professionals than do their own thinking.

What do you think about all this? Who do you think is to blame, if anyone, for this terrifying epidemic of obesity? Is it the fault of doctors and Western medicine? Should food companies be held responsible for the diseases caused by the products they sell? Or should consumers, ultimately, be the ones who shoulder the responsibilities? What choices have you made in terms of your own level of physical fitness and nutritional choices? The very fact that you're reading this website means you're probably one in a thousand people, so your habits are likely better than most, but could your own lifestyle use improvement as well?

For my part, I think all the parties share some of the blame here. But it starts with the people. If the people don't care about their own health, why should their doctors? Yet doctors don't try very hard to teach their patients about good nutrition, either. Most doctors, anyway. That's because they simply don't know much about good nutrition: it isn't taught in most medical schools yet (unbelievable!). Food companies, though, deserve the majority of this blame. They target and exploit young children to get them hooked on sugary, salty foods like breakfast cereals, nacho chips and soft drinks. They know full well that those taste habits carry well into adulthood, generating a lifetime of revenues at the expense of consumer health. I think it's time we started holding the food and beverage companies responsible for the health impact of the products they sell. Tobacco companies were ultimately held resonsible for selling products that cause disease. Why should junk food companies be let off the hook for engaging in the same marketing behavior?

Let's face it: many foods and beverages directly promote disease. Let's admit that, get it on the record, and stop hiding behind the "choice" myth. Soft drinks make people obese. They promote diabetes. They promote bone loss. It's time the soft drink industry stopped hiding behind the myth that soft drinks can be "part of a balanced diet," a position that is clearly absurd. The bottom line: if food companies had to reimburse consumers for their health bills, food products would suddenly get a lot healthier.

All over the world, we are dying from disease because the food companies are stocking the shelves with disease-causing products.

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