Up & Coming Weekly

THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Living In Fat City by MARGARET DICKSON Last year when the General Assembly was considering changes to the insurance plan that provides health coverage to state employees, a clearly frustrated woman sent me her thoughts on the matter in an email. The changes under discussion involved giving a cost break to state employees who do not smoke and who keep their weight under control, or, if you look at it the other way, penalizing those who do smoke and who are overweight or obese. My correspondent identifi ed herself as obese but declared herself fi t as a fi ddle as opposed to her slender husband who had all sorts of health problems. Her email began civilly and rationally, but I could tell that she was getting more and more worked up about her position as she wrote. After asking me not to support any such changes, she closed with this zinger. “And I have seen you and you don’t meet the Body Mass Index either!” Well! As an American woman whose life-long companions have been a set of scales and a preoccupation with my own weight, I can understand, if not sympathize with, her point of view. I also understand that for all sorts of complicated social and cultural reasons, far too many of us are overweight or obese, and it is affecting our health. That being my frame of reference, I am often drawn to news articles and television programs on subjects relating to weight and health. There are plenty. Just last week, I happened upon an acrimonious television show where a panel of aggressively fi t folks and some large and probably unfi t folks duked it out, fi guratively speaking, of course. The fi t ones simply could not understand how the others had allowed themselves to become so large. They complained that large people take up too much room in airplane seats and that they should be required to purchase two seats so as not to invade the space of others. The large folks talked vaguely about hormones and genetics and suggested that the United States should add overweight people to the protected class of people who cannot be discriminated against, just as we protect race, gender and religion. The very next day, I saw a show about how poor diets are affecting the health of American children, not because they have too little to eat but because they have too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right things. This show with our heads than with our hands. We stare at television and computer screens for hours each day, and many of us get little or no regular physical exertion. We live in suburban subdivisions far from shopping areas and offi ce complexes, forcing us to drive instead of walk to our destinations. Portion sizes on our plates have increased dramatically, especially in restaurants and probably in most homes as well. We load up on restaurant food with little chance of knowing what is really in it or how it was prepared. Our children do not roam outdoors or play spontaneous running games the way earlier generations have done because we fear for their safety. Schools have shifted recess and physical education to the back burner to accommodate the growing pressure for academic success. featured a camera recording an overweight mother in the doctor’s examining room with her overweight 8-year-old son. The boy was being tested for diabetes as tears rolled down his mother’s cheeks. The host of the show had just pointed out that what she was feeding her son — pizza, hot dogs and all sorts of other processed foods, was likely going to shorten his life. This show had also collected real bag lunches from real school students, and the host dumped them out to prove his point. Indeed, the bags were fi lled with processed and bleached breads, snack chips, processed meat and cheese, candy and soda or sugary juices. There was not a piece of fruit in sight, although one child did have a plastic container of fruit cocktail, in syrup of course. The fact that Americans are fatter than we have ever been has many contributors. We work more FRESH CAFE Good Food...Naturally The SM 212 Hay St. • 910-323-4100 • Organic / Natural Salads, Sandwiches,Wraps, Quiches and Soups • Assorted Selection of Micro Beer and Wine Hours: Mon-Tue 7:30am-3pm; Wed-Fri 7:30am-8pm; Sat & Sun 10:30am-3pm 6 UCW APRIL 14-20, 2010 Offering Day and Evening Classes • State Board Approved • Offering Day and Evening Classes • State Board Approved 1309 Morganton Road (910) 484-4900 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM This complicated mix of social change has occurred mostly during my lifetime, and there is no silver bullet to correct it. Today’s reality is, though, that health experts are increasingly warning that the generation now coming of age in our country may be the fi rst in history to be less healthy than its parents and the fi rst to have a lower life expectancy. That is truly scary. The bright spot is that we are now talking about it and acknowledging the gravity of the problem, even if some of us are aggressively defensive on one side or the other. It seems to me that we are at least approaching what many call a “teachable moment,” the realization that we really do have a problem and that we must tackle it. FYI. The overweight 8-year-old does not have diabetes, at least yet, and my BMI hovers just over the overweight threshold. I am working on it. MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET breakfast 7 days a week! Now serving

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