Assignment 16-Kathleen Gibbs

          Have you ever looked at the person on the airplane with the seat belt extender and thought to yourself, “oh gosh, please don’t sit next to me,”? Have you ever seen the obese person ordering at McDonalds and thought “gee, if you want to lose weight, just don’t supersize,”? Or the overweight person who drinks 5 sodas a day, “just don’t drink soda… easy as that.” Or, is it not. After neglecting the obesity epidemic for years, discounting it as an issue of eating too much and not exercising enough, it is time to take a closer look at obesity and stamp it out once and for all.  If it was really as easy as eating less and exercising more, we wouldn’t be in the midst of the largest epidemic the world has ever faced. Obesity.

          “Diet and exercise.” We have all heard these words, the way to lose weight and achieve the “perfect body”. There are thousands of different plans, books, and other aids that all claim to be the way to lose weight. But, Americans have been trying for decades and nothing seems to work. Yet we still sink hard-earned money into these empty promises hoping this next product will change our lives. But what if there is a missing piece to the puzzle? Why haven’t we stepped back and realized that eating less and working out more isn’t the answer and that there must be another culprit?

          In order to find the root of obesity, we need to understand that obesity is NOT an issue of weak wills or lazy bones, it is more complex than that. These people are sick with no end in sight. Obesity doesn’t just make people weigh more, it can give them heart disease, heat attacks, strokes, osteoarthritis, diabetes, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and a plethora of mental disorders. Sadly, diet and exercise won’t undo this monster. Now that we have accumulated more research on the effects of obesity and conditions and sicknesses that correlate with it, we can begin to search for the real villain.  

          Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrineologist, obesity researcher, and advocate for the removal of unnecessary sugar from our diets, points his finger at sugar when evaluating the cause of obesity. His data shows that our diets today, compared with the diets from thirty years ago, contain exponentially sugar. Sounds innocent enough but when looking at how sugar works in our bodies we find that it drives appetite while stimulating fat storage. Thus creating the vicious cycle, we now know as obesity.

          The two most common sugars are regular table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, both are composed of fructose, the worst type of sugar. If you read the labels of the food you eat, chances are, high-fructose corn syrup is one of the main ingredients. We find this nasty element in almost all processed food and sodas. High-fructose Corn syrup is a sweeter and, get this, cheaper additive than natural cane sugar and that’s what leads us farther into this mess.

          Besides the fact that high-fructose corn syrup has been proven to cause cancer, liver failure, dementia, and, of course, obesity, the corn industry has spent billions of dollars on false information campaigns to discount the hard science that displays the negative effects of high-fructose corn syrup. When you google search “high-fructose corn syrup”, the first listing is to a website called “corn.org” a website sanctioned by the Corn Refiners Association. It takes you to “corn.org’s” page discussing high-fructose corn syrup. This tab refutes the negative facts about high-fructose corn syrup claiming it’s “natural” even though when Michael Pollan was trying to write his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, they wouldn’t even allow him to watch the process of refining the toxic sweetener. Below “corn.org”, there is an entire page of links explaining the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup.  

          It is frustrating enough to know that most food in the grocery store is laced with the obesity causing high-fructose corn syrup but, the reason it’s there is even worse. Remember when I said high-fructose corn syrup was cheaper than cane sugar? That’s because of

 government subsidies. The New Farm Bill passed in 2014, appears to be ending some of the subsidies and moving to something called “crop insurance” which sounds privatized but, according to corpinsuranceinamerica.org, in reality, taxpayers will still be paying due to the government’s role in the system. Due to these subsidies, the farmers produce copious amounts of corn, so much that it can’t even be exported. And that is when high-fructose corn syrup was created, out of cheap, over produced corn. And it all started with subsidies.

          One of the main components in the obesity epidemic was created because of cheap corn due to taxpayer paid government subsidies. And because it is so cheap, major food companies started buying this addictive sweetener and injecting it into all their food products. The reason we can’t seem to get rid of this poison is because every time someone attempts to push for a change within the government and outside it, almost all the responses are negative. The refuters claim that removing the obesity-causing sweetener is unconstitutional because it is your right to eat what you want. That is true, the government shouldn’t tell you what to eat, but removing even half of the added sugar in processed foods and sodas would shrink America’s waistline.

          The biggest example is Michelle Obama. When President Obama was elected, she took on being a healthy living advocate. She has drastically changed the way many American’s think about nutrition and healthy lifestyle. She changed the food pyramid, made calorie counts more visible, and started her campaign “Lets Move!” to promote healthy lifestyles. But when it came to transforming the lunchroom, her plan received so much pushback, she was forced to greatly relax its regulations and focus her attention more on being active. A sad testament to the way the government’s connection with the food industry inhibits change in America’s diet.

          When are we going to stand up to the big food company bullies and revolutionize the way America eats? I don’t know the answer, but we can start to change the way we eat and look at food and help our family and friends as well. Integrating more fresh fruits and vegetables into our diets and less foods that come premade in shiny wrappers is a great start! Reading the labels of the foods we eat for added sugar and words like dextrose, sucrose, and fructose and reducing our intake of those foods will pay in dividends. Understanding the obesity epidemic and having compassion for those struggling is paramount. It is time to quit pushing the obesity epidemic under the rug and make right decisions regarding the health of our nation that will save lives.