Fast Food Nation
Just ran across a fascinating article on modern eating habits at harvard magazine online. To wit:
“Supposedly, in the richest, most powerful nation on earth, we can’t afford physical-education programs for our kids,” says Willett. “That’s really obscene. Instead, we’ll be spending $100 billion on the consequences. We simply have to make these investments.” Ludwig concurs. “There’s fast food sold in school cafeterias, soft drinks and candies in school vending machines, and advertising in classrooms on Channel One. Meanwhile there are cutbacks in physical education, as if it were a luxury.
Very interesting read if you’ve ever tried to lose weight. read it.
June 4th, 2004 at 8:20 am
Groan.
I read the article that linked here. Even though I’m an overweight person (working on that, though), I think I’m entitled to have several reactions to the jingophobic nature of the overall piece.
The one sentence that struck me as typifying the overall tone of the article was one of the lecturers pointing out that Japanese cars don’t have drink holders because the Japanese don’t eat in their cars. The implied sylogism is that because Japanese don’t eat in their cars, they eat less. The reverse construct being that Americans eat in their cars and therefore eat more.
Well, Japan is an island with world-famous traffic problems. The average Japanese spends very little time in his or her vehicle, choosing instead to travel by high speed rail. [1] (They do eat on these trains, by the way….I’ve seen them do it.)
There are real reasons for the increasing weight of Americans, but the “positive” reasons–such as the massive growth in individual productivity–are constantly downplayed. See, an American that would have spent 6.5 productive hours at a sedentary job 30 years ago is now spending 8.5 hours at same. With home computing extending the after-hours productivity of the American worker by leaps and bounds, we are all getting less excercise.
When we moved from the Agricultural age into the industrial age, nations as a whole experienced several physical changes. Moving from the industrial age into the technical age is contributing other same-spieces evolutionary/devolutionary effects. One of which is weight gain.
Yes, we need healthier diets. Yes, we need more exercise. Yes, the majority of Americans need to slim down–myself included. But these types of self-loathing (”fat americans waddling through international airports”) articles do nothing but create a new classism whereby the wealthy are erecting another, more visible, demarcation between themselves and the doubleplusungood common fat rabble.
[1] http://uktoyotaestimasite.tripod.com/Japanese_Market.htm
June 4th, 2004 at 8:24 am
Groan.
I read the article that linked here. Even though I’m an overweight person (working on that, though), I think I’m entitled to have several reactions to the jingophobic nature of the overall piece.
The one sentence that struck me as typifying the overall tone of the article was one of the lecturers pointing out that Japanese cars don’t have drink holders because the Japanese don’t eat in their cars. The implied sylogism is that because Japanese don’t eat in their cars, they eat less. The reverse construct being that Americans eat in their cars and therefore eat more.
Well, Japan is an island with world-famous traffic problems. The average Japanese spends very little time in his or her vehicle, choosing instead to travel by high speed rail. [1] (They do eat on these trains, by the way….I’ve seen them do it.)
There are real reasons for the increasing weight of Americans, but the “positive” reasons–such as the massive growth in individual productivity–are constantly downplayed. See, an American that would have spent 6.5 productive hours at a sedentary job 30 years ago is now spending 8.5 hours at same. With home computing extending the after-hours productivity of the American worker by leaps and bounds, we are all getting less excercise.
When we moved from the Agricultural age into the industrial age, nations as a whole experienced several physical changes. Moving from the industrial age into the technical age is contributing other same-spieces evolutionary/devolutionary effects. One of which is weight gain.
Yes, we need healthier diets. Yes, we need more exercise. Yes, the majority of Americans need to slim down–myself included. But these types of self-loathing (”fat americans waddling through international airports”) articles do nothing but create a new classism whereby the wealthy are erecting another, more visible, demarcation between themselves and the doubleplusungood common fat rabble.
[1] http://uktoyotaestimasite.tripod.com/Japanese_Market.htm