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There's so much to live for—including the thrill of going on first dates. "I'm 34, and I've never had a boyfriend," she says with a wistful smile. "I have a lot to learn."
(CNN) -- If you sat down with an accomplished self-portrait photographer, the last thing you might expect to hear is "I'm a bit uneasy in my skin right now." But that's what Jen Davis tells me as she eyes the voice recorder I've set between us on her living room couch. She tucks her legs beneath her. "In fact," she says, "I have to admit I'm a little freaked out."
Davis's inhibitions are understandable. She spent ten years creating striking, seductive images of her own 269-pound frame, and now, suddenly—with the top portion of her stomach cinched by a silicone Lap-Band and the extra weight melting away—her subject is disappearing before her eyes.
It's a man-made epidemic that's wreaking havoc on the healthcare system without a cure in sight. Rather than forcing people to accept obesity, it would make more sense to twist congress's arm in to limiting subsidies for agri-corps & manufacturers of the culprit food groups. Not to mention taxation on fast food chains that are essentially sending these people in to an early grave. The solution is right there, nobody wants to do shit about it. Obesity has a cure, but it'll mean taking on powerful lobby groups for the corn & soy industry which are in almost every item in any given grocery store in the U.S. Corn is even in batteries & tissue paper, google it. The McDonald's cheese burger was a 1/3 of what it is today, why? Why the need to always ask "would you like to supersize that for, FREE?" each time someone is buying a combo at any of the big 4 fast food chains? Manufacturers recoup a whopping (90% profit on any soft drink sold) as opposed to farmers who only recoup (10% profit on any produce sold). More than half of the American public is over-weight/obese today, are you kidding me? It's only part & parcel of the American political system. Lobby groups are just as influential and even more than most think. I refuse to accept it.
Alpha - The numbers say so, sxb. By numbers I mean all the diseases linked to obesity and their huge spike today than at any given time since recording started. Everything from type 2 diabetes, to hypertension, autoimmune disorders, heart problems, even certain types of cancer. It's all directly linked to the foods we're eating & specially to obesity. There's a very interesting edu-documentary the CDC co-produced with HBO last year I believe called "The Weight of the Nation" In it, it has doctors & public health specialists, urban health planners and government officials -- dissecting this very issue. More specifically the link between obesity & the foods we eat, our socio-demographic, lifestyles, diseases linked to it and ways to solve it. I can honestly say that it is perhaps the #1 crisis in the healthcare system, not that doctors are complaining, but these illnesses are chronic and often times have no cure. You have a food industry left unchecked & maybe even encouraged and a population constantly bombarded with food, at every turn=recipe for a disaster.
Yes, I don't disagree that the the food we are eating is creating higher cases of diseases, but does that equate to obesity?
To me, an obese person would be someone physically similar to the woman in the picture above. I cannot believe half of any population is obese. And from the bit I've seen of the States, half is far more than an exaggeration.
For someone educated in medicine, is it possible that you're over-dramatizing the situation? Why not take a week and count how many people you've seen that you would describe as obese? I wonder if it would be half.
Alpha - That woman is morbidly obese, not obese. You only need to be 30 lbs or more of your ideal weight to be obese, it's not that far-fetched. It's a reality and like P.O. said, it's even more apparent in poorer states like Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee which are respectively the fattest states in the U.S. You have poverty, abundance of all the wrong foods & their affordability, lack of quality foods (socio-economic factors play here), and you'll have a population slowly creeping up to obesity. It costs more to buy a decent mango at any U.S. grocery store (around $1.25) than it costs to buy a cheeseburger ($1 @ the dollar menu). Families who are cash strapped will buy the cheeseburger and buy it again, and again. It's no longer a question of what is healthier, it then becomes what is affordable. When you look at it in the spectrum, it adds up. You of course have over-eaters and processed foods by their nature have more calories, fats & carbs than natural foods. All these added calories bulk up and inturn become the lbs that cause obesity.
You know? The current healthcare system refuses to acknowledge nutritional medicine, emphasis is always on pills, for everything. We were never taught the power of certain foods in healing many of these chronic illnesses, it's something the medical community knows, but shuns for proprietary reasons. But, because of exposure time and again to this very issue, it has led me to adopt different choices in terms of what I eat. I've seen what obesity can do and what poor diets in general tend to do. I encourage everyone I know to reduce their red meat in-take, instead eat more veggies, white meats, fish, organic produce if possible. Limiting processed foods to a minimum.
Alphanumeric wrote:I understand the factors at play. I'm only questioning the supposed statistics.
These statistics come straight from the CDC. Through their BRFSS (Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Systems), which gathers obesity levels both at regional and national levels.
