Begin forwarded message:

> From: bill magee <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat Oct 11, 2003  2:40:31 PM Canada/Eastern
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions
> of Obesity
>
> You might find the following NYTimes article interesting.
> I t adds some interesting complexity to the discussion class, poverty,
> etc
> to obesity, health... I am not allowed to send the whole article due
> to CLICK4HP
lent\gth limitations, but NYT is free if you register...

>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Sat Oct 11, 2003  2:36:59 PM Canada/Eastern
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: NYTimes.com Article: The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of
>> Obesity
>> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> This article from NYTimes.com
>> has been sent to you by [log in to unmask]
>>
>>  The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
>>
>> October 12, 2003
>>  By MICHAEL POLLAN
>>
>>
>> Sometimes even complicated social problems turn out to be
>> simpler than they look. Take America's ''obesity
>> epidemic,'' arguably the most serious public-health problem
>> facing the country. Three of every five Americans are now
>> overweight, and some researchers predict that today's
>> children will be the first generation of Americans whose
>> life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their
>> parents. The culprit, they say, is the health problems
>> associated with obesity.
>>
>> You hear several explanations. Big food companies are
>> pushing supersize portions of unhealthful foods on us and
>> our children. We have devolved into a torpid nation of
>> couch potatoes. The family dinner has succumbed to the
>> fast-food outlet. All these explanations are true, as far
>> as they go. But it pays to go a little further, to look for
>> the cause behind the causes. Which, very simply, is this:
>> when food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it
>> and get fat. Since 1977, an American's average daily intake
>> of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent. Those 200
>> or so extra calories have to go somewhere. But the
>> interesting question is, Where, exactly, did all those
>> extra calories come from in the first place? And the answer
>> takes us back to the source of all calories: the farm.
>>
>> It turns out that we have been here before, sort of, though
>> the last great American binge involved not food, but
>> alcohol. It came during the first decades of the 19th
>> century, when Americans suddenly began drinking more than
>> they ever had before or have since, going on a collective
>> bender that confronted the young republic with its first
>> major public-health crisis -- the obesity epidemic of its
>> day. Corn whiskey, suddenly superabundant and cheap, was
>> the drink of choice, and in the 1820's the typical American
>> man was putting away half a pint of the stuff every day.
>> That works out to more than five gallons of spirits a year
>> for every American. The figure today is less than a gallon.
>>
        << snip >>

>> But the outcome of our national drinking binge is not
>> nearly as relevant to our present predicament as its
>> underlying cause. Which, put simply, was this: American
>> farmers were producing way too much corn, especially in the
>> newly settled areas west of the Appalachians, where fertile
>> soil yielded one bumper crop after another. Much as it has
>> today, the astounding productivity of American farmers
>> proved to be their own worst enemy, as well as a threat to
>> the public health. For when yields rise, the market is
>> flooded with grain, and its price collapses. As a result,
>> there is a surfeit of cheap calories that clever marketers
>> sooner or later will figure out a way to induce us to
>> consume.
>>
>> Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
>>
>

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