NEED WAR ON OBESITY

I reached for my sunglasses, sunscreen and beach towel in anticipation
of some quality time at a beach. After my blanket was laid out, I
settled to take in the sites of summer. I was in heaven and life was
perfect. Or was it?

When taking a closer look at my fellow man (woman, and child), things
have changed over the past 25 years. It wasn't the fact that most
families at the beach came with every imaginable toy. It was also not
that adults were littering the beach with their cigarette buts and
junk food garbage. It was the size of the people that shocked me!

It's not just the U.S. that is burdened with a majority population of
fat people.

I choose to eat healthy foods because I respect my body and mind as
well as my emotional and physical well being. I am not arrogant,
wealthy or successful. Yet, I do take the time, energy, respect and
money to keep myself in shape and enjoy life the best I can with the
resources I have.

Why are so many people across North America needlessly
obese?

Don't tell me it's because they're poor, uneducated or oppressed
because if that were true, then the 1930s would have been a fat decade.

No, it's because we have gotten lazy, become victims of a fast food
and junk food corporate America and an emotionally crippled population
that turns to beef jerky, ice cream and cheesecake rather than
standing up for ourselves and reclaiming our self respect. With all
the hoopla surrounding the war on drugs, I ask, where is the war on
chemically packed fast food and junk food? Or the war on unhealthy
eating? These things, like drugs, are harmful to your body in large
quantities, yet people put crap in their body to the point that we are
now faced with an obesity epidemic.

People all over this world are dying due to starvation and we (the
civilized continent) are just plain fat.

Just how civilized are we?

I wonder what it will take for us to wake up and take care of its
collective body, mind, emotional and physical well-being. Fat is not
beautiful. It taxes the health-care system, environment and social
fabric of society.

W. Jeff Leggat

Penticton