I have been overweight all my life, and it has caused health problems. All one must do is look at the five different pills I take daily, the shot of Ozempic once a week and the insulin I take four times a day. I am a living example of what chemicals can do for a person. As a toddler, I remember being praised for eating everything on my plate. And I did.
In my teens, I enjoyed snack foods and drank huge amounts of a heavily sugared soft drink. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that a public clinic identified how much trouble I was in. I had to change my lifestyle. Obesity is a problem of the 20th and 21st centuries. A recent statistic indicated that 70 per cent of U.S. residents were overweight. Similar numbers exist in Canada, and that is a drain on our health system.
On Sunday night, we watched 60 Minutes and listened to an interview with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. David Kesseler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The two agreed that ultra-processed foods were making Americans unhealthy, causing diabetes and heart disease, strokes and heart failures. Kesseler even stated that those ultra-processed foods were as dangerous as smoking.
He noted that processing companies have taken, starch, corn syrup and other common items and have converted them to a whole new group of food chemicals that are easy to absorb into systems that have caused metabolic changes to humans. The pleasure of ingesting those foods causes our brains to keep coming back for more. They trigger us to overeat. And we introduce those to our youngsters.
The revised U.S. food guidelines now appear similar to those of Canada, although they encourage more protein from meats. The food guidelines encourage both Canadians and Americans to prepare more meals at home, reflecting back to the 1800s and early 1900s when we ate and cooked all of our meals at home.
The thought of picky eaters was unheard of, going by the literature of those earlier time periods. A simple meal was prepared for supper, whether it was meat and potatoes, stew, spaghetti and sauce or beans and rice. In the morning it was probably a bowl of porridge. And you ate what was put in front of you—parents didn’t have the time or resources to prepare multiple meals for different family members. Even in the 1950s there was little give to picky eaters.
Today with refrigeration, parents can give in to the whims of their children as manufacturers have tuned snacks to entice kids after school so that they are not hungry at mealtime. It is so easy to give in to after-school snacks.
We understand what causes us to be overweight. We have the means to reduce our caloric intake and to eat healthier. We have the skills to prepare home-cooked meals and reduce the need for fast food. We only need the will to change our eating habits to become a healthier nation.
