When it comes to food, America is not just the fattest country on earth but probably the most schizophrenic as well—home to the Big Mac and Weight Watchers, the super model and the couch potato.
The love-hate relationship with food was examined in the aired documentary “Fat”, and if there is any comfort for the more than 90 million overweight Americans it’s that the rest of the world is also getting fatter.
“There is an enormous pressure on people to be thin and to be physically fit but at the same time there is a tremendous pressure and inducement to eat,” Dr. Kelly Brownell, professor of psychology at Yale University and a participant in the program, said in an interview.
“You’ll see a Baskin Robbins next to Weight Watchers. You’ll see a Family Circle magazine with a delicious chocolate on the cover beside a diet article,” said Brownell. “At the same time as we have record levels of obesity, we have record levels of eating disorders6 too,” he said.
The desire to eat fatty food came from a primitive survival instinct to store enough energy in good times to ensure survival when food was scarce. But in a modem urban society, where fast food chains appear on almost every block, the instinct to eat fat has begun to work against us.
The documentary claims that nowhere is the exposure to junk food more prevalent than in the United States, where the problem has been compounded by the increasingly sedentary modem lifestyle.
It also says that members of Arizona’s Pima Indian tribe are the fattest people in the fattest country on earth. Until recently the tribe lived a simple life, but in 1984 when the tribe won a gaming license it joined the American mainstream. Today the tribe is plagued by obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
Just 800 kms south in Mexico, another branch of the Pima tribe continues to live a traditional life and eats a traditional diet. These Pimas have none of the problems of their American counterparts, who are on average 27 kgs heavier.
Part of the problem, according to Brownell, is the intense advertising of junk food in the United States. The average American child sees thousands of TV commercials each year, most of which advertise fast food, candy and soda.
The food environment has become so “toxic” according to the documentary, that some US　schools even offer fast food such as McDonald’s and Burger King in school cafeterias.
But junk food is also proliferating overseas, resulting in increasing rates of obesity in such　countries as China, where fast food restaurants have recently taken hold.
Compounding the new-found availability of junk food is the changing opinion on what is the ideal body. These days thin are king.