PBS documentary FAT

In my class, we finished the semester watching a PBS documentary called FAT. It highlighted our nations acceptance of discrimination of obese people and how this affects the daily lives of many Americans. We constantly label obese people as lazy and unmotivated, but is this fair? Hearing the responses of many overweight Americans made me reevaluate our approach to fighting childhood obesity. Instead of labeling it with negative terms, we should provide the support that our nation needs to fight this epidemic.

Wegmans taking a step in the right direction for healthy change

In my nutrition class this Monday, a head nutritionist came to discuss what Wegmans is doing to make healthy changes in the public. The family owned business has a strong connection to their communities and want to make eating healthy as easy as possible. Check out their website, its basically a free diet plan. It includes nutritional facts, special diets and the eat well. live well. challenge.

http://www.wegmans.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10052&identifier=CATEGORY_546

Much more than one thing...

“One thing to do about food: a forum” presents multiple solutions to our nation’s current food industry. The overall trend away from industrialized farming is a solution shared by many of these authors. The three main issues that are focused on are eliminating the purchasing of factory farm products, making the public aware and increase desire to become involved in the policy, and ultimately finding a solution to the childhood obesity epidemic. To have the public reduce their consumption of factory food, they need to become aware of the processes associated with industrialized food production. Due to the billions spent on marketing the taste benefits of the product, little attention is placed on the conditions in which the products are made. But does the public even want to know this? Does the public even care? We have authors like Schlosser emphasizes the importance of knowing what is behind what you are eating, but does the public really want to know? Some of the public is fully content with trusting the FDA and keeping the rest of the details in the dark. Our society has created documentaries and novels describing the secrets of industrialized food industries, but has this caused a significant change in the people of America? Even after watching Supersize Me, I am still guilty of my craving for McDonald French fries. So maybe public awareness isn’t the solution.

Similarly to the beliefs of Wendell Berry, there needs to be a label on the problems associated with food. The most common terms we here associated with food are hunger and obesity. Even though they are opposite problems in many ways, there ability to gain public attention is significantly similar. When people hear of such a problem, especially dealing with children, they feel a sense of responsibility to change. Even though there are many more problems just these two, I believe that our society needs to label food problems with an issue that they are compassionate about. Maybe it needs a label like childhood obesity that will eliminate the advertisement targeted at children who do not know the difference between fact and persuasion.