The “Western Way Of Life” is an eating disorder. We
are increasingly a culturally stunted, attention-deficit herd of obese
individuals, the gooey interiors of mechanical beetles whose carapaces
are the obese automobile-like trucks we drive in a constant tangle of
frantic low-mileage scrambles to fetch, carry and appear, rolling our
individualized dung balls of acquisitiveness, like dung beetles as
compulsive as Sisyphus and trained by televised marketing brainwash
programming to consume through our world, giving our planet a fever, and
eating up our lives in commercialized cycles that extract our psychic
and metabolic energy to swell the flows of labor, money and adulation
milked by a parasitic capitalism.
The pathology of the processed food industry is that rather than
earning a reasonable living by selling healthy nourishment, they hustle
for hyper maximized profits by selling taste addictions as stealth
wrappers around food-like media whose consequences of consumption they
externalize as our costs in obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension,
cardiovascular disease, strokes, cancers, and an explosion of health
care costs sapping the national economy.
Chemically modified foods (say, more than 5 ingredients), grain-fed
meat and fish, and artificial food-like substances that are largely a
media of corn or soy flour (refined carbohydrates) heavily doped with
salts, trans fats (hydrogenated vegetable oil) and high fructose corn
syrup (sugar), are ubiquitous and cheaply available in comparison to
fresh natural (organic) whole foods.
The scientifically engineered taste impressions of these processed
foods so easily seduce the tastebuds of an unwary public that a
gargantuan torrent of it is allowed to sluice very profitably down into
the nation’s stomachs, and from there its loads of hydrogenated oils,
refined carbohydrates, sugars, salts, and preservatives (which will keep
your corpse from rotting as quickly as corpses used to before the 20th
century) can diffuse throughout your body, accumulating as body fat and
artery-clogging lipids and excess glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream.
If you eat, then you should read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense Of Food.
It is a magnificent presentation of the full panorama of the natural
web of food and human health, and its commercial exploitation in
industrialized societies. (1)
Perhaps no food-like substance is more poisonous to American health
than sugar drinks (whether fizzy or “natural”) and processed
carbohydrate media loaded with high fructose corn syrup (e.g., “frozen
yogurt”). Broadly speaking, carbohydrates are first converted to glucose
(a sugar, as are sucrose and fructose) that flows in the bloodstream as
instantly available metabolic fuel. When an excess of such sugar-fuel
circulates (because there is insufficient activity to burn it up) it can
be withdrawn and converted to stored fat. This is accomplished by the
release from the pancreas of the hormone insulin, which escorts
circulatory glucose toward storage as body fat. A persistent excess of
such blood sugar, which is beyond the body’s ability to reprocess, leads
to the malady known as diabetes (which has several forms).
The sudden fall in insulin levels after glucose has been stored is a
trigger to appetite, a signal which we all know as that craving for
“more.” The consumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates are
particularly addicting in this way, you eat these “empty calories” and
then are soon “hungry” again. In too many cases, people find themselves
in a negative feedback loop of eating more and more (‘carbo-sweet’
stuff), getting fatter and fatter, and always being “hungry.” This type
of counterproductive hunger-craving is absent with a proper (vegetable
based) diet (more on this later). One lively presentation on sugar and
human health, which expands on the points here, was posted by Louis
Proyect. (2)
Data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), for 2009-2010, show that 69.2% of American adults over 20 years
of age carry excess body weight, and among them are the 35.9% of
American adults who are obese. More disturbing is that obesity occurs
among 18% of American children between 6 and 19 years of age, and even
12.1% of youngsters between 2 and 5 years of age! (3) For a riveting
examination of the political economy of obesity in America, and efforts
to reverse it, see the documentary film Obesity And Poverty. (4) A similarly sobering report on the obesity crisis in Britain was recently televised. (5)
The terms “underweight,” “normal,” overweight,” and “obese” are
defined by a quantity called the Body Mass Index (BMI). The ratio of a
person’s mass in kilograms, divided by the square of their height in
meters, is called their BMI (which has units of kilograms per meters
squared). This quantity was first used in scientific research by Adolphe
Quetelet (1796-1874), before 1850. In 1972, physiologist Ancel Benjamin
Keys (1904–2004) published a research paper demonstrating BMI to be the
best proxy for body fat percentage among ratios of weight and height.
(6)
The BMI is a convenient but not perfect gauge of a person’s amount of
body fat, and by extension their probable degree of fitness. Of course,
no simple physiological ratio can capture the full reality of every
individual life. (7)
The upper boundary of the normal range of BMI was identified as
numerically equal to 25 (in metric units). To find BMI using body weight
in pounds and height in inches, divide the pounds by the square of
height in inches, and multiply that result by 703.
Taking as your ideal physiological condition a body mass (“weight”)
that produces a BMI equal to 25 for your height, then: you are
“underweight” when below 74% of ideal weight, “normal” when between 74%
and 100% of ideal weight, “overweight” when up to 120% of ideal weight,
and “obese” when over 120% of ideal weight. Conditions below 64% of
ideal weight and above 140% are termed severe (underweight and obesity,
respectively).
The natural way to maintain a healthy body (a normal BMI) is to eat a
diet composed primarily of organically grown: leafy vegetables eaten
raw, steamed vegetables, fresh fruit, and supplemented with fish, beans,
grains, and occasionally meat (100% pasture raised) if you are so
inclined. Oil enters this diet in small quantities, such as the olive
oil in salad dressing or used in the grilling of fish steaks. Salt
enters as a minor ingredient in cooking, and sugar is reserved for the
sweet treats one has now and then. The quantity of food consumed each
day should be just enough that it supplies the calories needed to power
your daily metabolism. Exercise, which is activity that increases heart
rate and causes one to inhale oxygen more rapidly and deeply, will
increase the daily metabolic rate (calorie burn), requiring a higher
amount of food consumption above that necessary to maintain a sedentary
routine. Additionally, exercise will increase endurance (aerobic
exercise) and strength (anaerobic exercise).
It is a given that the maintenance of health requires forsaking all
pernicious habits, like: smoking (all smoke inhalation diminishes oxygen
intake, and introduces aerosols into the bronchia), excesses with
alcohol, self “medication” or the many forms of willful intoxication;
and good health also requires a restful sleep of at least 8 hours each
night (or, within every 24 hour period).
So, given a basis of healthy behavior, time for proper rest (8-9
continuous hours) and exercise (20-30 minutes) every day, the
availability of fresh wholesome (organic) foods, and the time to
prepare, cook and eat them (for a family), one should easily be able to
maintain an ideal state of health, both physically and mentally.
Our problem as people in industrialized societies (subjects of
capitalism) is that the compulsions driving our Western Way Of Life are
entirely hostile to granting individuals the time for proper rest,
exercise and feeding (“slow food”), and they deluge us with sweet,
salty, creamy, fast and cheap hyper-tensing diabetes-izing food-like
media whose mass consumption sustains an industrial profitability beyond
the dreams of a Croesus possessing a golden egg-laying goose.
A fundamental act of rebellion against capitalism is to expel it, in
its form as processed food and your excess fat, circulatory lipids and
glucose, from your body. This is not a trivial act, but a strenuous
discipline for self-directed and life-long management of one’s own
metabolism. In becoming more aware of my body’s metabolic management, I
gain in health, which is to say I am more in control of my own destiny
as it is influenced by my vitality and physicality, and I untangle
myself a bit more from ensnarement in a political economy that is sick
unto soullessness.
From our own daily experience, my family has learned that getting,
preparing and eating healthy food is both time consuming and expensive.
While processed, chemically modified (additives, preservatives,
hormones, antibiotics, pesticides), and corn-based, -fed or -loaded
foods are marketed everywhere, one has fewer locations or occasions for
getting real foods, as in weekend farmer’s markets. “Eating healthy” is
today entirely a matter of being wealthy enough to indulge in that
luxury. This is criminal, but the logical result of our industrialized
food system (see 4 and 7). There is always some would-be boss or
would-be owner who sees your time as their potential money. Hence,
people pressed for time and money by the exigencies of their economic
struggles will have a harder time resisting the lure of “convenience”
and “fast” food, which besides making them fat, diabetic and
hypertensive, adds to pollution because of all the plastic packaging.
Most of our healthcare costs, like the “war on cancer” (which is also
a socialized externality of the tobacco industry), the epidemics of
coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes, are simply the result of
the population swallowing the pernicious externalities required to
produce the profitability of the processed food industry. The “market
solution” to our financial crisis of healthcare would be to tax all
processed foods sufficiently to fund full universal nationalized
healthcare. (Processed food could be defined leniently as any
individually marketed item with more than 5 ingredients, or rigorously
as any food that is not certified organic).
Such a scheme would undoubtedly cause the food industry to revamp its
product lines so we the people could eat real foods bought conveniently
at our local supermarkets, and not get sick: obese, diabetic,
hypertensive, arteriosclerotic, cancerous, and prematurely dead. This
would consequently lower the costs of our healthcare. When the
healthiest foods are both widely available in all their varieties, and
are also the lowest priced foods, while the processed stealthily toxic
stuff is the most expensive ($50 McDonald’s “Happy Meals,” $15 Coca
Colas) then many (most?) Americans will regain their health.
Your body is the physical center of your consciousness, the
mother-ship of your imagination, and it marks out the path of your
world-line in the four dimensional space-time continuum. Purging the
residues of capitalist processes from your body is the regaining of
awareness, health and self-control, it is both a political rebellion and
a personal return-to-nature.
Now, with every thoughtful forkful consumed and every sip, with every
bead of sweat and pant of catch-my-breath from self-directed exertion,
and with every considered moment of selecting food at markets and then
preparing it for family meals, I bring the operations of my metabolism
into closer harmony with the natural cycles of energy flow on our
planet. This type of awareness is as described in Michael Pollan’s book,
The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (8)
What is important about this personal rebellion is not its degree of completeness, but its enduring persistence.
Manuel García, Jr. is a retired engineering-physicist and has long been interested in energy, both natural and technological. He blogs at http://manuelgarciajr.com, and his e-mail is mangogarcia@att.net.
Notes
1. Michael Pollan, In Defense Of Food, Penguin Books, 2008
2. Louis Proyect, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,”
3. Obesity and Overweight (Data for the U.S.)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm
CDC data (2009-2010) on obesity and overweight in the U.S.
35.9% of adults age 20 years and over are obese.
33.3% of adults age 20 years and over are overweight, and not obese.
18.4% of adolescents age 12-19 years are obese.
18% of children age 6-11 years are obese.
12.1% of children age 2-5 years are obese.
4. Poverty and Obesity (HBO: The Weight Of The Nation)
HBO Documentary Films, 14 May 2012
http://youtu.be/7MJnm5X9NN0
5. Britain’s Obesity Crisis
Channel4News, 18 February 2013
http://youtu.be/uoDoAasVe6I
6. Body Mass Index (BMI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index
very severely underweight BMI: under 15
severely underweight BMI: 15 to 16
underweight BMI: 16 to 18.5
normal BMI: 18.5 to 25
overweight BMI: 25 to 30
moderately obese BMI: 30 to 35
severely obese BMI: 35 to 40
very severely obese BMI: over 40.
7. Faith Simon, “When The BMI Is Not Enough,”
8. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Penguin Books, 2006
Source: Counter Punch