Obesity and being overweight is one of the few things in the world were it’s still ok to look down your nose at someone in that condition. The reason, I think is because it’s generally assumed that over weight people are that way of purely of their own doing that it’s the curse of rich westerners with too much money indulging in volumes of food that people in poorer countries could only imagine. The only problem with the logic of this argument is that you would therefore expect people in the richer parts of Australia to be fatter than those in poorer parts, but, this is not the case. In fact it's the opposite. I live in a town that was once featured on a dodgy night time current affairs show as having a particularly high rate of overweightness and obesity. It is also a poorer lower class area as well. Living here it’s easy to understand why people have chips and gravy for lunch and a large pizza for dinner. It’s because chips and gravy is $2 and a large pizza can be just $4.95 if you have the right discount voucher. That is cheaper than even most home made options, let alone healthy home made options. The reason for increase in obesity is not that we have so much money that we just eat ourselves silly, it’s because for many who are poor and uneducated the diet is easy and affordable.
2 comments:
I lived in India for three years and recently moved. obsesity is a huge problem there.
Yeah. I try to buy local produce and organic when I can. But its really quite a significant price difference.
I guess its because, when you stop raping the planet for cheap resources you start paying the ACTUAL economic value for each product.
So, the more people who choose to pay the extra money (even if its just for one or two of the things you buy per shop) it starts to become economically viable for producers to do things in a way that is sustainable and just.
Probably straying from the topic a bit here, but you get the point.
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