BIG Problem in America

Two out of three Americans are overweight and that’s expected to rise to 3 out of 4 by 2020.  I am sure many of you knew that America was an overweight country.  You may not have known the problem to be as great as the statistic shows, but what I am sure many of you do not know is that 1 out of 3 Americans are expected to have diabetes by 2050.  This is a growing problem that is so hard to fix.  You may be wondering why I am talking about this and tossing these statistics out there.   Well I found this show on youtube.com and found it very interesting, no it’s not a “food show” per say, but it is a show about food and a lifestyle that is very unhealthy.  Some of you may think to yourself “well I am not overweight, or this doesn’t affect me.”  Let me tell you that as much as this show mostly targets the extreme obesity problem we have.  Many of you may not think you are overweight, but you just might be.  Since I was in the Army I know this all too well, since we had height and weight checks all the time.  The military has a scale that has a range of weights for each height, and if you weigh more than what it says you should for your height then you have to get a body fat test done.  This will ultimately tell you if you are overweight or not since muscle weighs more than fat.  You may not look at me as being overweight but I am here to tell you that I am.  I am not an extreme case, but what hit home to me was the fact that I am going to be a daddy to a little boy come February.  The U.S. government says that the current generation could have a shorter life span than their parents.  As many of you I do not want to die, I would love to live forever if as long as I was able to still live a meaningful life, but there is no way I should out live my kids barring any type of tragedy.  One in eight Americans rely on food stamps, but the stocks of many fast food restaurants such as McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell are at an all-time  high.  This is a problem that is very complex and difficult to fix, since there are so many different hands in everything now a days to make money.  With the economy the way it is today it is very hard to stretch your dollar to buy healthy food for you and your family, but you can go and get $5 pizzas from Little Caesars or hit up the dollar menu at virtually any fast food joint.  Now with the serving sizes easily doubled from what they used to be years ago, it just seems to make more sense to get more for your money, but when you do this you risk your health as well as the health of you family over time.  When you eat food that is not healthy for you, your body processes it a lot faster because there are significantly less nutrients in the food which in turn you become hungry a lot quicker.  With that being said when you become hungry you eat, and if you become hungry faster you will eat more, which gives more money to these companies but you are slowly killing yourself in a way that you many never know.  Minorities have been hit the hardest by this epidemic with Blacks having a 50% higher prevalence of obesity and Hispanics and Native Americans at 25% compared to Whites.  This is shown is so what of a smaller isolated scale in the 8^th Ward in southeast D.C. being the most obese place in the country.  This is an issue that will take time to overcome as well as education on the problem and how to eat more healthy, but when the economy is the way it is we may not see this problem in America get any better or “skinnier” for that matter.