The Need for Accountability Regarding America’s Obesity Crisis

Kate Harveston

Kate Harveston is originally from Williamsport, PA and holds a bachelor's degree in English. She enjoys writing about health and social justice issues. When she isn't writing, she can usually be found curled up reading dystopian fiction or hiking and searching for inspiration. If you like her writing, follow her blog, So Well, So Woman.

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5 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    Binge-eating disorder is on the upswing.

    One can induce binge eating in rats by subjecting them to three elements – stress, weight-cycling, and highly palatable food. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18428649).

    I’m a bit of a binge eater. I credit that to the years of cutting weight as a wrestler in high school and skipping meals in college and beyond.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    Fast food places can be navigated successfully. I’m a big fan of the Wendy’s combo with a baked potato. I think every fast food place has salads now, and you can usually get them with grilled chicken. Chick-Fil-A has a great chicken wrap.

    I’m also a big fan of Wawa. If you don’t have them in your area, they’re 7-11-looking places with a very good deli, not the kind of plastic-wrapped sandwiches you find in most convenience stores. Sure, you have to get out of your car (someone needs to fix that), but you get a custom-made sandwich with fresh ingredients quickly, for a good price.

    So a kid wanting to eat junk at a burger joint is different from an adult wanting to eat something decent at a burger joint.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Pinky says:

      Wendy’s actually does have pretty good salads — I think they put them together when ordered, albeit from ingredients pre-cut and refrigerated. They’re kinda the only ones, though; every place else is Burger City.

      You also can’t eat them quickly or while driving. One of the things I’m happy about, when I go places with my wife, is that I can drive the car (and have a burger) while she gets the salad, which she prefers.Report

  3. dragonfrog says:

    The Canada new food guide, which I think came out early this year, addresses some of this.

    The old guides were just about food groups, and whatever the accepted wisdom of the time was about how much of what types of foods to eat. The new one has stuff about cooking and eating together, taking time to sit and enjoy your meals, etc. (Also, much to the distress of dairy farmers, it switched focus to macronutrients instead of food groups – so “dairy products” is no longer a food group with a recommended number of servings per day. Get your protein, fat, carbs, and calcium any way that works).

    How much influence it has, I don’t know – the food guide certainly shapes home ec curricula, but I doubt it shapes labour law much.

    The other area where the food guide or whatever other measures could try to focus is on people’s expectations for extracurricular activities. For us, and I’m sure we’re not alone in this, the biggest obstacle to eating home cooked meals together is all the things we have scheduled in the evening – basically we’re as booked up as we can get without hiring in childcare. We still do alright most of the time, but it can be tricky.Report