Even wild and feral animals are steadily gaining weight. Something truly weird is going on in the world.

You have stumbled onto an excellent way of explaining one of the worst flaws of modern society: respecting the people you deal with has become too inconvenient, and worse, too unprofitable.

The roulette wheel

Goes round and round

And stops a bit too short

It's made to stop too short

It's built to stop too short

The CDC changed its definition of obesity in mid-1998, so depending on when the data used to make that graphic is from, it might be totally misleading (in that the same person at the same weight might be "normal weight" in 1998 and "overweight" or "obese" in 1999.

)

Just wanted to add in that missing close-parenthesis from my comment. Thanks.

I also meant to add: I like the idea of a loss of fundamental respect underlying a lot of crap in societies today. In my mind, it goes along with a lack of community, as well, or a sense that we don't have to look out for others because we don't think anyone's going to look out for us.

Some people think we're going into another ice age and that global warming is a blip. Perhaps our bodies agree with this and have started putting on poundage in anticipation of the weather.

deborah, that's interesting, but if that's the case what our bodies are actually effecting is diabetes, inopportune sweating and clogged arteries naive of the fact that we got internal heating and stuff

I like the idea of a loss of fundamental respect underlying a lot of crap in societies today.

yeah. I mean I just latched onto Marx's rant about industrialization pretty much, I was going to title this "alienation of the consumer" (as a counterweight to alienation of labor) but then I looked it up and realized that alienation of labor is just a subset of what he was theorizing, which is a pervasive capitalist alienation

I think it goes deeper than that though, I think capitalistic society lets an individual have more respect (being middle class > being a sharecropper) but basically I think it's more about just paying attention. I've never lacked for people all around in media and eco-activists and alt-weekly types telling me about how there are things to pay attention to but incorporating it into your lifestyle (I used to do this; but it's part of a phenomenon I don't support, so I'm going to do this instead and I enjoy the new way better) just increases the, well, 'resolution' of one's brain more than yet-another-argument about bottled water

for example, I quite literally look at a bunch of foodstuffs in a store, sweep my eyes across the whole counter and know 'not for me, I'm not even interested in this factory-packaged stuff'. It's like a layer of vision placed upon your regular vision. And I quite literally pick up things and be like, this is metal and glass--nice!--this is plastic and cheaply printed labelling, not my kinda thing. And it's an almost sensory awakening

Firas, I've been having that experience, too. Just last night I noticed a Panera commercial where they were talking about how great their bread is and showing an employee taking armfuls of it out of the oven and I was just like, those are just as good as rocks to me. I can't eat that.

And don't get me started on Whole Foods. 2/3 of their floor space is devoted to pre-packaged foods! The "whole" in their name is such a lie. Never have liked Whole Foods.

respecting the people you deal with has become too inconvenient

Oneswellfoop, I think you hit it right on the head there.

There are entire aisles of the supermarket that I haven't gone down in years because I don't buy crap, everything I eat is fresh and as chemical-free as I can get it. I think the most processed thing I buy is yoghurt. And I look at the food the supermarket promotes in its BOGOFs or 3 for 2 offers and know that I can rarely take advantage of these offers because they target the so-called food they want to turn over for the quickest profit, processed, chemical synthetic food.

I agree, it's a lack of respect for people, that they're undeserving of anything other than the lowest common denominator.

In the UK we have Primark, which sells jeans for £4, t-shirts at 3 for £5, sweaters for £2, dresses for £3, all of them made by Third World workers who are little more than slaves. The clothes are fucking crap, you wear them once and then if you try to wash them they shrink or stretch you can't wear them again. I will not set foot in the door of Primark, it disgusts me that a company can have so little regard for humanity, both its customers and the poor sods who make the garments.

Most UK shoe shops don't sell half-sizes "because there's no demand". But I'm demanding them, what am I, if not a potential customer you've just lost business to because you think a significant proportion of your customers should wear shoes that are too big or too small instead of stocking sizes they can fucking buy?

When I think about this sort of thing, I get so depressed I can't eat or buy anything, and give up and go home.

There are entire aisles of the supermarket that I haven't gone down in years because I don't buy crap

Oh definitely. Even in terms of my inbuilt sensibility in life (i.e. much before now) I've never really jumped at deals and discounts and things. I mean if I wasn't going to buy it anyway I'm not going to buy it cause it's 30% cheaper right?

Just today I was looking at this real estate listing in the newspaper and it offered something like immediate convenient booking with a note "just for today!" Can you imagine going to a venture capitalist and saying "you can invest in my company--but only today!" They'd be like, "fine, go with the guy investing in you today! I'm not going to jump the gun because you have an artificially narrow window."

I've seen this map a few times. Morgan Spurlock showed it in SuperSize Me. I listened/viewed a Geography class on Berkeley OpenCourseWare and the professor showed this map to the class as an example of a certain type of map (can't remember what type. I'm not Berkeley material :-)). He also showed another map that showed the increased use of HFCS through the years that correlated with the obesity increase. Like occhi said the parameters have changed and we really don't know, although I am not a fan of HFCS. If I were going to make an educated guess the size of drinks that are loaded with HFCS can't help, but we don't know for sure. I'm going off-topic but I don't have much respect for Spurlock's tactics. His purported calorie counts don't jive and he allegedly won't release his food diaries.

More off-topic buy Senyar's comment upthread (and speaking of alienation) made me think of Last Train Home. It's an amazing documentary of migrant workers traveling home for Chinese New Year.

Great post, firas. You said it very well. I won't even tell you how crappy advertising has lured my kids. I'm always educating and explaining the tactics of advertising when my kids insist that I buy a robotic mascara wand or an adjustable mattress.

I like the idea of a loss of fundamental respect underlying a lot of crap in societies today.
Absolutely - I get so depressed with all the cut-price, cut-quality crap that is shoved in my face every day. I'd much rather go without something than pay hard-earned cash for something that will break the second time I use it and not work properly in the first place. I'd rather keep wearing my old clothes than buy a new shirt that will stretch out of shape and fade the first time I wash it.

In one way, it is a clear lack of respect for people - the message being 'you don't deserve quality products'. However, we really do only have ourselves to blame. Because we've accepted the 'more stuff is better' approach to life, we are desperate to get more stuff, so we settle for the poor quality crap instead of saving up for what we actually want, perpetuating the cycle and ultimately leading to dissapointment because we bought crap, so we go out and buy more crap that makes us dissapointed, leading to us buying more crap ...

One of the things that I remember from my childhood is that nice things were expensive. It's taken me a lomg time to understand that this was a good thing - the same (on the surface) things these days are much cheaper, but they don't satisfy in the same way and we end up not having respect for them ourselves, making us lose respect for property (our own and others), contributing to the downward spiral of society. Good quality 'things' satisfy the owner in a fundamental way that today's cheap crap simply doesn't do.

I am pretty surprised coming back to Australia to see the level of packaged food available. In Japan there isn't that much pre-made food (if you take the cup noodles out of the question) so you tend to make things from scratch.

I discussed this with an American buddy that I'm not going to fall into that convenience trap. It's not worth putting mediocre tasting calories into your body.

I'm pretty proud to say that I make everything from scratch as usual. I can't help but notice though what others have in their trolleys - and in this area at least - there are a lot of people buying frozen pizza and entire packaged meals. I mean - they look revolting. It's mass produced food, frozen then reheated all together. There is no way it can compare in taste to the same things prepared fresh. In the time to heat one up you could have sear-grilled a piece of fish and thrown together a salad. Also it would be cheaper to do so.

I know I'm lucky in that even though I was raised by a single working Mum who was a wildly experimental but not especially good cook - she did cook a square meal for us every night (until we got old enough to help more). My grandmother was a full on cook and we always sat down to proper meals when we were over there. So I come from a background in which convenience food doesn't feature. It helps because I can have a bunch of random stuff and know I can make something tasty.

I don't prepare separate meals for the small human either - he gets a smaller serve of whatever I am having (except for lettuce - omg he is such a drama queen about lettuce) - I may tone down a spicy dish a little, but I have a fear of him becoming a dreaded chicken nuggets and fries type of eater. When we go to a store we look at and pick up and smell the fresh fruit and vegetables. He watches me while I cook now from his new perch at the kitchen island. He gets to help make the pastries and dough items. I try to make it fun and an exploration.

Firas I'm really happy for you that you have been discovering real food lately and interested in making it. You have an excellent opportunity where you are to source some amazing ingredients and learn what to make with them.

I discussed this with an American buddy that I'm not going to fall into that convenience trap.

It's not hard to avoid if you can afford not to. It tastes like crap, so there is not much motivation to eat it.

"It's not hard to avoid if you can afford not to."

I wish this were true. I've tried so hard, so many times, to cook for myself from scratch, and if it's not something you learned how to do growing up, it is such an enormous, exhausting sinkhole of time, attention, and energy. Even if you do know what you're doing, cooking for one is an incredible pain in the ass. To my mind, crappy prepared foods are a very small price to pay for being able to function as a single-person household.

I thought after I wrote that that I should have explained myself better. I mean "afford" in all meanings of cost. Including time and energy. I know plenty of people who work 12 hour days and couldn't imagine cooking on top of that (as well as parenting!) I am lucky in that I can afford both the time and money to do so. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that plenty of people can't.

Hope I didn't offend!

If you have a decent freezer then cooking for one can be even easier in some ways - if you freeze portions then you can nuke and rotate your menu.

it is such an enormous, exhausting sinkhole of time, attention, and energy. Even if you do know what you're doing, cooking for one is an incredible pain in the ass.

I agree, which is why from time to time I have to drop out of cooking for a while and just eat toast for dinner.