North America Has Become a Huge Fat Farm

Last year, I had the shock of my life when I visited the US. I had never seen so many super obese people in all my life. Statistics say that one in three Americans is obese, but I wasn’t prepared for how big people have become. During my vacation, I felt slim on the beach and by the pool as compared to the people around me, when in reality I could stand to lose 40 pounds.

In some ways, I can sympathize with my obese friends across the border. I have been working out four to five times a week for the last two years; I watch what I eat, cutting down on carbs, eating more fruits and vegetables, but after an initial weight loss of about 20 pounds, I’m stuck at my present weight, which is not a healthy weight.

I went for my annual check-up and my doctor said I was in excellent health despite my ample girth. I told my story and she told me that it was genetic, my pancreas is super- efficient and that I easily store the smallest amount of extra blood sugar as body fat. Apparently, if there were a famine, I’d be one of the last to die.

This was depressing news since I’m pretty close to my limits for working out. Much more and I would risk injury.

Then by chance, more precisely because of my personalized magazine application for my iPad, I received an article from the New York Times questioning whether sugar was toxic. Within the text, there is a link to what I believe to be perhaps the most important video on Public Health in the last thirty years, Sugar: the Bitter Truth.

In short, we are told that the decision thirty years ago to promote a low fat, high carbohydrate diet across North America has been an unmitigated disaster. Yes, we are eating less fat, but now we are eating more sugar in our diets as never before, about 140 pounds per person per year. Simply put, our bodies cannot metabolize this amount of sugar, especially when it contains fructose. So we pack on the pounds, add to our bad cholesterol, and increase our risk to heart attacks, diabetes and cancer.

The food industry and the regulatory agencies are largely to blame. High Fructose Corn Syrup is found in almost all of our processed food. Looking at the evidence presented in the video, it appears that Fructose is indeed a toxin. Unfortunately, regulators will not act to curb its use since it falls into the category of a substance that is not acutely toxic (it won’t kill you after just one meal) but is toxic with chronic use (it will make you sick after a 1000 meals.)

Consequently, food producers in North America are pumping out enormous amounts of cheap, sugar-laced processed food products unabated by government and the population is more than happy to gobble them up.

Driven by the profit motive, politicians representing the food industry and the interests in the health sector have come to realize is that there is a fortune to be made by fattening up the population, and the beauty of it is that no one is forcing anyone to consume the adulterated food stuffs. In fact, we are genetically programmed to seek and ingest that which is sweet.

First, the US government subsidizes the corn producers so they can provide the food industry with a cheap foodstuff that can be used widely and generates huge profit margins. Second, private health care providers can then capitalize on a disease ridden population, whose treatment is also subsidized by the state.

It has been estimated that the US government could save more than one trillion dollars a year by simply reducing the incidence of preventable disease among its citizens that is largely attributable to lifestyle. However, to do so would cut into the profits of the food-health service consortium. As a result, nothing substantial gets done to address the root cause of the obesity epidemic in North America, its addiction to sugar.

Is there anything more American than knocking back a Coke or wolfing down a double slice of apple pie?

Yeah, the insatiable greed that drives people to exploit as many as they can and sticking the government with the task of having to deal with the mess.