February 3, 2004
Kamloops Daily News


For the first time in recent history, our children will die
sooner than we do.  Modern medicine has managed to increase
the life span of each generation. But modern medicine has
failed to find a cure for obesity or an answer to the puzzle
of why we are eating ourselves to death.  We know we eat too
much of the wrong things and exercise too little, but that
insight hasn’t saved us.

Part of the problem is that modern food is too good for our
own good.  Along with the essentials of air and water, we
are hard-wired to seek and consume food.   Not only is
eating essential, it is enjoyable.  How many other basic
needs can be fulfilled so easily?  We love to eat.  And
delicious, high calorie food is plentiful and relatively
cheap.

The complications of obesity are going to prematurely kill
the next generation and we are helpless.  It used to be
called adult-onset diabetes because it was a problem for
mature adults.  Now it’s called type 2 diabetes because
it’s affecting younger people.

Our health care system will be hit by two generations. 
Aging baby boomers will be requiring medical attention about
the same time as their obese children.  Obesity is already
costing us billions of dollars a year and that number will
skyrocket.   

The price of obesity will be paid by all of us but low
income families will bear the greatest burden. Low income
families already have poorer health.  They will also suffer
the most from obesity.

Harvey Levenstein is a social historian who has studied two
centuries of North American eating habits.  "Normally an
epidemic hits a huge swath of people, and to call the
obesity rise an epidemic implies that everyone is being
affected by it.  But much of it is concentrated among lower
income people, that it's very much class related,"
Levenstein says.

The fast food industry can hardly be blamed for making
delicious food.  Health is not their mandate, marketing and
profits are.  Hamburgers, shakes and fries are wonderful. 
We will go a long way to get them.  The Bushman of the
Shuswap (aka John Bjornstrom) would walk 35 km for a Big
Mac.   Even the good life of living in the Shuswap gets a
bit tiresome.  Bjornstrom hunted squirrels and gathered cans
of beans from the cabins that he pillaged but eventually he
succumbed to the lure of fast food.

Our prehistoric ancestors hunted and gathered food as well. 
Just getting enough to eat was a constant challenge.  They
didn’t have the luxury of raiding nearby cabins or a
McDonalds restaurant to take the kids.  They ate mostly
high-fiber, low calorie food.  Their digestive systems are
designed for processing a large volume of food.   Even when
hunters brought down a mastodon, it was with the great
expenditure of effort.   And without refrigerators,  you
better barbecue those steaks pretty fast or you’ll have a
smelly mess on your hands.

We have the same high capacity digestive systems as our
ancestors and we have the same grazing instincts.  The
problem is that we are not grazing on roots, seeds, and
berries. Our food is a mismatch for our guts.  It’s high in
calories and low in fiber.  So we eat and eat because of a
biological imperative.  Primitive urges kick in.

We want to blame someone else - - fast food restaurants for
making cheap delicious food, our kids for sitting in front
of the TV or computer too much, our parents for not passing
on their good eating habits.

We imagine that there was a time when families ate right and
that we just need to return to the good old days.  Rena
Mendelson, one of Canada's leading nutritionists, says, "You
know, if we look back to the golden days of the 50s and
think about what people actually ate. People deep-fried
their own french fries in those days, they even deep-fried
doughnuts. The table had large  servings of meat. So
sometimes we glamorize the past."

Faced with possible government regulations,  the fast food
industry is reacting. In a series of highly publicized
moves, they've announced new labeling and new lower fat
choices.

We know what we should be eating, and we know we should
exercise more, but will we?  Primitive instincts and the
marketing of high-calorie food will probably win over
reason.

David Charbonneau, owner of Trio Technical

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