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Weight of the nation takes a realistic look at a looming crisis by ferujkll sdff
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Weight of the nation takes a realistic look at a looming crisis |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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Bigger than individuals Some critics (including those who have yet to watch the series)worry that The Weight of the Nation only fans fear, stereotypes fat folk, and doesn t go after thereal villain in the war against weight : the food and beverage industry. But from this critic sperspective, the program doesn t lay shame and blame at the feetof the overweight and obese people it features. On the contrary, itpresents their struggles in a sympathetic and non-judgmental light,revealing how hard the body fights weight loss despite goodintentions, and how current social, economic, and governmentsystems sabotage Americans attempts to stay healthy. Yes, there is the question of personal responsibility, and thefilms address physical inactivity and poor diet as key contributorsto this problem.
But there s also healthy discussion of factorsoutside an individual s control including genetic makeup andevolutionary biology (we re programmed for scarcity in a time ofabundance), workplace changes, fast food marketing strategies,federal farm subsidies, changes in American food culture, and theready availability of low-cost, high-calorie food. The series also points a finger at the global corporations that areresponsible for peddling the unhealthy, highly processed foods atthe crux of the problem. It s hard to imagine commercialtelevision, hugely dependent on advertising by the makers of suchfood, taking on this topic in the first place. To produce The Weight of the Nation, HBO teamed up with some major government agencies battling thisspreading epidemic the Institute of Medicine, the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes ofHealth as well as the child-focused philanthropy Michael &Susan Dell Foundation, and health-care giant Kaiser Permanente.
The series doesn t sugarcoat matters, but makes it clear thatobesity-related health problems will become an unprecedented crisiswith dire consequences if left unchecked. They re also incrediblyexpensive: At the current rate of increase, obesity-relatedhealth-care costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018. In conjunction with the series, HBO also launched a massive social media campaign to spread the word about what can be done about these healthproblems, and reached out to more than 40,000 community-basedorganizations across the country. Take that, obesity epidemic.
And yet, as John Hoffman, executiveproducer of the series, noted in a discussion after a recentscreening in Oakland: One of the first steps that might put aserious dent in this problem would be addressing governmentsubsidies for commodity crops, which have made ingredients likehigh-fructose corn syrup cheap, accessible, and ubiquitous. Hesuggested changing the date of the Iowa caucus a step that wouldgive this farm state considerably less political power. (Suchcreative thinking didn t make it into the series. But it s foodfor thought as is the hormonal defect hypothesis, detailed ina Newsweek story last week , which argues that refined sugars and grains are the major playersin a problem that no amount of dieting and exercise could correct.). I am Bag & Luggage Agents writer, reports some information about disposable baby bib , baby bibs wholesale.
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