Obesity has been cited as a contributing factor to approximately 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year and has increased health care use and expenditures, costing society an estimated $117 billion in direct (preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services related to weight) and indirect (absenteeism, loss of future earnings due to premature death) costs. This exceeds health-care costs associated with smoking or problem drinking and accounts for 6% to 12% of national health care expenditures in the United States.
Het Amerikaanse maandblad Psychology Today berichtte in mei 2012:
starting in the mid-1970’s our
weights suddenly began to shoot up so that the average man or woman today
weighs 25 pounds more. As we all participate in the American obesity epidemic, almost everyone is
heavier today than their counterparts of 40 years earlier.
En dat correspondeert met het gegeven dat
In 1970, Americans spent about $6
billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than 110 billion. Americans now
spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers,
computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies,
books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined.
Het is het resultaat van de
kapitalistische onverzadigbaarheid, waarbij de burger alleen nog maar als
consument via geconditioneerde reflexen reageert, met alle gevaren van dien. Psychology Today werkte dit verder uit:
Why Are We Eating so Much More Than We
Used to?
How "bad" fats make us gain
weight.
Starting in the mid 1890’s,
American insurance companies began recording the heights and weights of men and
women seeking life insurance. From that time to the mid-1970’s, the weights of
typical American men and women remained remarkably constant. Over these 80
years, the average middle-aged woman weighed 145-150 pounds, and the average
man, 165-170 pounds. But starting in the mid-1970’s our weights suddenly began
to shoot up so that the average man or woman today weighs 25 pounds more. As we
all participate in the American obesity epidemic, almost everyone is
heavier today than their counterparts of 40 years earlier. Why?
In one sense, the answer is
easy: We are heavier because we are eating more. The average number of calories
per person in the American food supply was actually lower in 1965 (3100
calories) than it was in 1909 (3500), but then began to go up and is now more
than 3900, an increase of 25%. The increase is the same when allowances are
made for waste and spoiling, and there is a similar jump in the number of
calories based on peoples’ reports of what they have eaten. So why are we eating many more calories
than we used to?
Some experts say we are eating
more because we are so addicted to fat and sugar that we cannot stop ourselves
from eating too much when our foods our laced with these tempting, tasty
ingredients. But if we look at the share of calories in our food supply from
sugars, it fell during the time we were gaining weight, and the share from all
fat also fell until 1997 when it started to rise again. Others blame all
carbohydrates, but their percentage has not changed either.
And there was no reason we
could not have been eating more forty or fifty years ago if we had wanted to.
Sugar was just as sweet, and there was no lack of appealing foods and sugary
creamy desserts. In fact, for those who remember, food tasted even better when
it was prepared with plenty of animal fat. People could have easily afforded to
buy more food, and to eat more cookies, cakes, ice cream, and drink more
sugar-sweetened sodas, but they didn’t. Those with higher incomes—and even
better access—weighed less, not more. Men and women would usually add some
pounds between their late teens and middle
age, but much less than they do now, and most people
seemed to be content with their weight. There were hardly any books about
dieting, and no weight loss programs, joggers, or fitness clubs.
To better understand why we are
eating more today, we need to consider how our brains control our desire for
food. Our appetite and weight are carefully
regulated by an ancient part of the brain, the hypothalamus. This
almond-sized bundle of nerve tissue makes sure that animals eat enough to
maintain their body functions and activities, but not enough to get fat. (Most
animals have no more than five percent of their weight in fat.) In regulating
our hunger, the hypothalamus monitors the levels of the sugars, amino acids,
and fatty acids in our blood which are the end products of our digestion. And
it pays particular attention to fat. Not only is fat the best source of
calories, but it makes up about a fifth of the cells in our bodies not counting
water, and half of our brain cells. And there are two “essential” types of
polyunsaturated fat in our cells, omega-3 and omega-6, that can only
come from our diets.
If we compare the current
American diet with our diets forty years ago, we find similar
levels of sugars, amino acids, and total fats, but the amounts of the two types
of omega fats have changed very dramatically. In a natural diet of grains,
meat, dairy foods, fruits, and vegetables, there is a bit more omega-6 than
omega-3, but today there is more than twenty-times
more omega-6 than omega-3. This shift in the proportion of these different fats is by far the biggest change
in our diets over the past forty years.
One reason for this shift is a
three-fold increase in our consumption of processed vegetable oils made from
corn and soybeans; these oils are now the major source of fat in the American
diet, and they are ubiquitous. They are used to make processed foods, including
fried foods, fast foods, snack foods, and baked goods. Since most vegetables
and grains have only a small amount of fat, there would be no way we could
consume this much vegetable oil without the industrialized chemical processing
of corn and soybeans.
The other reason for the
remarkable change in the omega balance of our diets is the decision to increase
meat production by feeding corn and soybeans to immobilized cattle, pigs, and
poultry instead of letting them graze on the grass that has been their natural
diet for fifty million years. While grass has much more omega-3 than omega-6,
corn is almost all omega-6. An analysis of a hair from CNN’s medical
correspondent in 2007 showed that 69% of the carbon atoms in his body came from
corn!
To make matters worse,
vegetable oils high in omega-6 interfere with our getting the omega-3 which is
naturally present in food. While fish and seafood are especially rich in the
active forms of omega-3, when they are fried or cooked with vegetable oils, the
omega-3 they contain is no longer available to us.
But is it possible that this
dramatic change in the balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats could be making
us eat more? There is good reason to think so. They are much more in balance in
the western European diet, and people there weigh much less. American men and
women who have high levels in their blood of the most active forms of omega-3 and low levels of active omega-6
weigh forty pounds less than those with high omega-6 and
low omega-3. The average ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in Americans is more than
five to one, while in the Japanese, who have very little obesity, there is more
omega-3 than omega-6. There is also another clue from an unusual form of
vitamin E that is especially abundant in corn and soybean oils. The level of
this odd vitamin in our blood tells how much corn and soybean oil we are
eating; and the higher the level, the more we weigh.
We are also learning more about
how omega fats influence the appetite-regulating cells in the hypothalamus.
These cells are rich in receptors for endocannabinoids, our body’s form of the
ingredient in marijuana that increases appetite. Because these are made from
the active form of omega-6, arachidonic acid, more omega-6 in the diet means
more munchy-promoting endocannibinoids. Arachidonic acid is also the source of
inflammatory types of signaling molecules called eicosanoids which are also
linked to increased weights. Omega-3-based eicosanoids have the opposite
effect.
The most active form of
omega-3, DHA, is critically important for the growth, development, and
functioning of our brain, and the hypothalamus may also be able to sense how
much is in the blood. Those with higher levels of DHA in their blood tend to
have lower levels of arachidonic. People are hungrier after meals high in
omega-6 than meals high in omega-3, even if the total amount of fat is the
same.
Ours is the only country in the
world that has transformed its diet so radically. This change was actually
thought to be beneficial because of the mistaken belief that increasing omega-6
would reduce the risk of heart disease. The western European diet today is much
closer to the diet we had forty years ago, with 41% more animal than vegetable
fat, and, not surprisingly, their weights are very similar to our weights back
then. And their death rates from heart disease are also much lower than ours.
While our highly industrialized
methods of food production have temporarily lowered the cost of calories in our
food supply, we know that they cannot be sustained in the future. And,
unfortunately, the unprecedented shift in our diets from a natural pattern that
has been maintained for tens of thousands of years to a sudden and unnatural
dependence on corn, soybeans, and their oils has now made us the fattest people
on the planet. There is more on diet and weight in our book, Why Women Need Fat.
Written by Will Lassek and
Steve Gaulin
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-women-need-fat/201205/why-are-we-eating-so-much-more-we-used
Bovenstaande
informatie nuanceert niet alleen Geert Mak’s bewering dat obesitas in de VS
te maken [heeft]
met te veel suiker in het brood, te veel vet in het vlees, te veel smakelijke
reclame langs de weg, te veel aanmoediging om de godsganse dag maar door te
schransen…
ze geeft ook een psychologische en biologische
verklaring voor de, opnieuw Mak, ‘enthousiaste gretigheid waarmee
Amerikanen hun tanden zetten in alles wat hun voor ogen komt,’
tenminste, alles dat eetbaar is. Er zit dus een zekere logica in de
irrationaliteit van de vetzucht. In plaats van zijn gedrag te veranderen, gaat de
mens door dezelfde fouten te maken. De Amerikaaanse etnograaf H.L. Goodall,
Jr., schreef in dit verband eens dat ‘in addition to the lives we lead we
also live lives we don’t lead.’ Het relativeert ook het begrip ‘vrijheid.’
Welke vrijheid bezit het individu
dat zijn hele leven lang is blootgesteld aan uitgekiende reclame en propaganda?
Die conditionering staat haaks op de officieel gepropageerde doctrine van de VS
als ‘the land of the free, home of the brave.’ Het betreft hier
een mythe die D.H. Lawrence al in begin jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw ontleedde in Studies in Classic American Literature.
If one
wants to be free, one has to give up the illusion of doing what one likes, and
seek what IT wishes done… Which will win in America, the escaped slaves, or the
new whole men? The real American day hasn’t begun yet. Or at least, not yet
sunrise. So far it has been the false dawn. That is, in the progressive
American consciousness there has been the one dominant desire, to do away with
the old thing.
De moderne
consument is verslaafd geraakt aan grote hoeveelheden fast food. De
hunkering naar meer is onstilbaar.
In het tweede deel van Democracy in
America stelde de Franse graaf Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840:
A nation
which asks nothing of its governement but the maintenance of order is already a
slave at heart, -- the slave of its own well-being, awaiting the hand that will
bind it. By such a nation, the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded
than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community are
engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting
the upper hand in public affairs. At such times, it is not rare to see upon the
great stage of the world, as we see at our theaters, a multitude represented by
a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd:
they alone are in action, whilst all others are stationary; they regulate
everything by their own caprice; they change the laws, and tyrannize at will
over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see how small a number
of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall.
Een
treffendere beschrijving van de huidige VS is ondenkbaar. De moderne
mentaliteit heeft geleid tot een systeem waarbij – om een recent voorbeeld te
geven -- niemand verbaast opkijkt wanneer bekend wordt dat
Prison Labor Booms in US as Low-cost
Inmates Bring Billions
US
breeds a Chinese-style inmate labor scheme on its own soil. Both state and some
of the biggest private companies are now enjoying the fruits of a cheap and
readily available work force, with tens of millions of dollars spent by private
prisons to keep their jails full.
See also -
Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons:
Video - It’s terrible to watch some of the
videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the
most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.
En dat
terwijl toch iedere burger beseft dat
The degree of civilization
in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,
zoals Fjodor Dostojevski
schreef in Aantekeningen uit het
dodenhuis. D.H. Lawrence:
This the land of the free!
Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and
that’s my freedom. Free? Why, I have never been in any country where the
individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen… Those Pilgrim
Fathers and their successors never came here for freedom of worship. What did
they set up when they got here? Freedom, would you call it?
They didn’t come for
freedom. Or if they did, they sadly went back on themselves.
All right then, what did
they come for? For lots of reasons. Perhaps least of all in search of freedom
of any sort: positive freedom, that is.
They came largely to get
away – that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? In the long
run, away from themselves. Away from everything. That’s why most people have
come to America, and still do come. To get away from everything they are and
have been.
‘Henceforth be masterless.’
Which is all very well, but
it isn’t freedom. Rather the reverse. A hopeless sort of constraint. It is
never freedom will find something you really positively want to be.
Hoe volstrekt anders is de
bewering van Geert Mak in zijn reisgids over ‘Amerika’ dat Thomas
Jefferson’s ‘uitgangspunt een staat [was]… waarin alle souvereiniteit bij het volk
werd gelegd’ en dat ‘in de constitutie dat systeem verder [werd] uitgewerkt.’ Nogmaals
de grote Britse auteur Lawrence:
What
were men drifting away from? The old authority of Europe? Were they breaking
the bonds of authority, and escaping to a new more absolute unrestrainedness?
Maybe. But there was more to it.
Liberty
is all very well, but men cannot live without masters. There is always a
master. And men either live in glad obedience to the master they believe in, or
they live in in a frictional opposition to the master they wish to undermine.
In America this frictional opposition has been the vital factor. It has given
the Yankee his kick. Only the continual influx of more servile Europeans has
provided American with an obedient laboring class. The true obedience never outlasting
the first generation…
A
vast republic of escaped slaves.
Look out, America! And a minority of earnest, self-tortured people.
De dagelijkse
werkelijkheid verdwijnt echter achter de façade van de ‘sanitized version of reality,’
zoals die door de officieel gesanctioneerde opiniemakers wordt verspreid. In
de Donald Duck-versie van de
mainstream media zal de doorsnee westerse burger nooit lezen wat wel op de
weblog van de Amerikaanse Veterans Today
Military & Foreign Affairs Journal wordt gemeld:
More than 30 top U.S. officials, including presidents G.W. Bush and
Obama, are guilty of war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity “legally
akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany,” the
distinguished American international law authority Francis Boyle charges.
U.S. officials
involved in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy” in the Middle East and Africa who
either participated in the commission of the crimes under their jurisdiction or
failed to take action against them included both presidents since 2001 and
their vice-presidents, the secretaries of State and Defense, the directors of
the CIA and National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and
heads of the Central Command, among others, Boyle said.
“In international legal terms, the U.S. government itself should now be
viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law,”
Boyle said in an address Dec. 9th to the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on
Human Rights at the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan. Boyle is a
Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and
the author of numerous books on the subject.
Lees
verder: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/12/more-than-30-top-u-s-officials-guilty-of-war-crimes-boyle-says/
De
onverzadigbaarheid, de mentale en psychische vraatzucht in het Westen, kan alleen in
stand gehouden worden door goedkope lonen en goedkope grondstoffen elders en
dus door onderdrukking. Is dat onvoldoende dan volgt oorlog. Alles moet
gemobiliseerd blijven, niets kan in rustig een eigen bestaan leiden in de
ideologie van het vraatzuchtige neoliberalisme. Tocqueville:
He who has
set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a
hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to
enjoy it… If, in addition to the taste for physical well-being, a social
condition be superadded, in which neither laws nor customs retain any person in
his place, there is a great addeitional stimulant to this restlessness of
temper. Men will then be seen continually to change their track, for fear of
missing the shortest cut to happiness…
Nooit kan
hij echter zijn doel bereiken, want
Whatever efforts
a people may make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of
society to a perfect level; and even if they unhappily attained that absolute
and complete equality of position, the inequality of minds would still remain,
which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of
man… Hence, the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion
as equality is more complete. Amongst democratic nations, men easily attain a
certain equality of condition; but they can never attain as much as they
desire.
Meer over
de werkelijkheid morgen.
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