July 16, 2018
We need new ways of dealing with the obesity epidemic, says David Katz, professor of preventative medicine at Yale University. In an editorial article in the June 2018 Infectious Diseases in Children, he lays out the problem at hand.
"In preventative medicine, we have long expressed to one another in words and at times images, too, how little sense it makes to mop a flooded floor and not turn off the running faucet. No crisis of modern public health better typifies such systemic dysfunction than epidemic, and indeed hyperendemic, obesity in children and adults alike."
When you read his editorial and the accompanying two articles, you become eerily aware of what most of us suspected. Global business entities have tried successfully to hijack our primitive desires to obtain calories for survival. They have employed neuroscience researchers to probe the inner workings of our brains in response to certain smells, tastes and feelings to find the go point at which we become interested repeatedly in a product. This is essentially what the social media and gaming companies are doing now to hook us on our mobile devices.
You do not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that we are in trouble when companies are spending billions to know how to addict us to things that we should not eat, watch or do.
I rarely feel like there is a doomsday scenario playing out in the world, however, reading these papers, I feel somewhat frustrated that the game is so stacked against us for sanity, health and vitality.
The fight goes on. Take a moment today to parent up by removing screens from your child, giving them real whole food and hugging them tightly while keeping their freedoms intact.
Dr. M
Katz ArticleKatz Article
Chicago Tribune Article
New York Times Magazine Article
