Every blog post does not have to be a research paper and so tonight I will just express opinion and grave concern about the state of disease prevention.
Health care reform is happening and within the congressional debates and presidential meetings are many nods to the importantance of prevention. Specifically, prevention of disease can be tied to three things of which we have control, and a fourth of which we don't, genetics. We do have control over our weight for the most part, for what we eat, again for the most part and for the amount of exercise we do.
With regard to what we eat, when legislating change, I implore the powers that be to confront the issue of how our food has changed and how readily available and cheap the worst types of food have become.
I say this as in the last day or two I have seen the 1 dollar double cheeseburger promotion, the 25 cent hot dog and the 1.50 dollar discrepency between a snack that is full of sugar and one that is sugar free. What IS THAT>?!
We have a crisis and it is because people cannot afford to eat nutritious low calorie food. Furthermore, they don't know exactly which food is healthy and low calorie nor how to prepare that food so it remains so.
I feel frustrated because I could absolutely educate society with a public health grant.. I could take the information that I have on my blog and You Tube to people who do not access the web. I cannot however, change the price of food.
Even today at the beach, I saw a family where the mother and perhaps her sister were substantially overweight.. they came from the snack bar with french fries, which they shared with the children who were not YET overweight. Was there another option at the snack bar? I do not know. Was it as cheap as the french fries? Likely not.
It is so hard for me to know the right thing and witness the wrong thing. Many people, regardless of circumstance, are naive when it comes to how food and exercise affect their health but pointing it out individually is not the right technique. It will backfire. Community education and policy change is less threatening and more cost effective and physically effective than pointing out individual misgivings and mistakes.
There are people who are in my inner circle who do not do the right things even though they are pretty well informed. I get that. I DO get that. It is like smoking. Smokers know that it is killing them, but not smoking is a completely different lifestyle for them. Same with ME and running. Running all the time is not the best thing to do, I often have over use injury, I KNOW that but I love running.
So my job, my quest.. it is two fold. Food has to be affordable and people have to know how to prepare it and eat it. We joke about backing away from the table, but seriously, we HAVE to back away from the table.
An example, I found these awesome 100 calorie snacks today... on my Mom's counter!! They are Newton's Fruit Crisps, pretty expensive so I probably won't buy them.. but there are two "crisps" in the package and the package has 100 calories. When I tried them it was like I finally found my low calorie Pop Tart.... very very yummy. I ate a pack today and thought, I can see that people would eat several packs at once, exactly how NOT to moderate calories. If people would retrain themselves to eat every few hours and to have a general idea of what those foods are going to be, they will STOP eating (when the meal is over) as they remind themselves that they will eat again very soon.
So today I just wanted to express my frustration I suppose. I am frustrated that healthy food is not affordable. I am frustrated that many people do not know which foods are healthy and how to keep them that way when preparing them. And I am frustrated that people do not do what works even when they know what it is. Many of these things are not the fault of the individual, except in the end, you decide whether or not you will do the "treatment".
No comments:
Post a Comment