Self Gratification

Based on my own actions in my pantry/refrigerator this morning, I am beginning to gel on an understanding why a full third of our nation's population is technically obese.

For a long time I believed the explosion in obesity since 1985 had to be caused by the food we consume (remember, we're consumers first and people second, so we don't eat food, we consume it). Indeed, I still think this is a rather important component...but I've also come to believe that it is likely more cultural than I originally thought -- it is due to our increasing desire for instant self-gratification.

I am not immune to waist management; as a type I diabetic I struggle with the balance between food and insulin and insulin too often wins the battle, resulting in a lifelong fight to keep my health/weight in check. Nonetheless, this morning I made an instant decision to eat some cookies on the counter as they were right there -- instant, no effort involved in preparation. My longtime mantra of "all food eaten ought to have been prepared by you" fell short. I now believe that if we all followed this mantra, virtually no one would be overweight.

It is as much an issue with processed foods as it is with the (near) instant gratification a frozen pizza provides. When you don't have any involvement in the food you consume you also have little in the way of patience and willingness to wait until a communal meal, if these even exist anymore. Cupholders in cars. Foods designed to be eaten with one hand. These are the culprits, not necessarily the foods themselves.

It is against this backdrop on a nation calorically rich yet starved for nutrition that a person can approach two hundred and fifty eight pounds on light beer, chicken fingers and cigarettes and before the age of sixty requires a reconstructive knee and a stent or three. The knee is restored, the heart capable of a few billion more beats, yet the underlying causes go unsolved and because of the knee the person "can't exercise" and because of the stents "can't exert herself" and so applies for a state handicap placard so she can more easily pull into the closest stall at the discounted cigarette store.

A more correct approach would be healthcare designed to stop the smoking, to encourage the loss of fifty eight pounds, and to correct the other issues that makes the "patient" believe that exercise on an artificial hip/knee is fraught with danger.

No, instead, her "health" insurance covers the $42,358 knee surgery, the $23,040 angiogram/angioplasty employing two $334,000 surgeons while ignoring the underlying causes. Yet her health is not improved, only life prolonged. Think of the care that could be afforded this woman if instead of these two surgeons a team of twelve $55,600 "real" health care practitioners were able to convince her the value in losing weight, stopping alcohol/tobacco/prescription drug abuse, etc.

That's, of course, an impossible conclusion in our society, one driven by the inability of our citizens to recognize the long term value in twenty minutes of daily exercise, in the time it takes for their own food preparation, and the loss of the immense profits the healthcare system reaps from heart surgeries, cancer drugs, MRIs, hip replacements, prescription narcotics, on and on. It is why we spend a fifth of our entire nation's productive output on healthcare (and increasing) on a population whose health is already marginal (and decreasing).

I do not hold any illusions that our nation's consumers will ever take to the harder, time-tested and sustainable "health" care practices of correct eating and exercising. I can't see it because I can't even follow it.