Obesification Again...

I saw this article today on Modern Healthcare and it pissed me off, and even more so in the context of what's been happening in the headlines recently.

It’s long past time for American politicians to grow up. What a bunch of immature privileged frat boys we have in Washington.

Defending the gun lobby and preservation of a hateful symbol endorsed by state governments. Refusing to tell the truth about what’s going on with the proliferation of mass shootings and racially motivated violence. Lining their pockets from the even wealthier sociopaths and narcissists writing them checks.

But immature, spoiled little boys need more than a slap on the wrist. They need responsible adults to hold them accountable and take away their toys until they clean up their act.

Here’s a laughable thought…what if we could make a scale that was super cheap, purchased at Walmart, where you plug in your height and it calculates your BMI, showing you where you fall in the green, yellow or red or danger zones, corresponding to healthy, overweight, obese, and morbidly obese, since people can’t “see” body mass index.

If only it were that simple.

We’re not educating people about health, physical activity, and the consequences of what they put into their mouths while not moving their bodies.

We’re not teaching kids habits of taking care of their health from an early age, we’re not funding PE and sensible health education in schools.

We’re not building safe communities that encourage parents to let their kids play outside and safe streets for people to walk and commute by bike, not promoting healthy lifestyle habits, reasonable work hours, a chance to get enough activity during the workday, short commutes, healthy foods instead of fast food garbage.

Not only should we curtail the marketing of junk food and unhealthy activities on TV, we should curtail sedentary TV watching. We’ve been irresponsible in allowing corporate lobbyists from junk food industry to influence education, entertainment, and communities. Not only have we failed to invest in our infrastructure, we’ve failed to see that our infrastructure consists of the health of our people.

We've given science a back seat while putting money in the driver's seat. Except money doesn't have brakes.

When are we going to wake up? We have a political problem, and it’s intimately related to our 75% overweight and obese population, our dwindling life expectancy, our number 37 rank in the world on health care, our growing numbers of those impoverished and struggling economically.

We hear about the lack of investment in infrastructure- the things used by the little people- roads, bridges, communities, or the basic things a civilized society needs- public education, a future with promise, not debt and enslavement by a culture expecting people to pledge allegiance to the corporate states holding a noose around their necks.

Killing us with insurance premiums that keep expanding in the name of healthcare, you look down at us from your luxury C-suite seating. While the insurance companies, hospital industries, and pharmaceutical giants keep growing their profit margins, people’s waistlines are expanding just as fast as quality and length of life are declining.

We are headed into another election cycle with a larger than usual assortment of boy clowns with even larger gonads to deny and defend as needed the policies that keep the few and rich safe and secure while ensuring the continued decline of the American quality of life.

These boys continue to lie as their lapel flags disappear into their ever-growing bulk.

Because they know they will get away with it until American adults wake up from our sugar-fueled coma and roll our supersized bodies off the couch…