Blog Post

Watching evening TV for the first time in a long while, I was struck by the plethora of junk food adds and the number of diet plans, diet companies & prepackaged, home delivered food outlets that grace our screens. All purporting to be convenient, healthy, cost effective and life changing. As a society we have never been more educated or had greater access to information pertaining to our health and well being, yet everyday we see parents taking kids of all ages to fast food restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner. People of all ages undertake an immeasurable number of fad diets that never seem to work. Are we so lazy that we don't care, always seeking the easy way out or could it be we are so time poor all we can manage is to drive a few km (not walk) to the nearest burger joint, or have someone deliver it to us. Surely the saturation advertising these companies employ isn't working, we all know how these industries work so surely we can resist or at the very least know what we are getting ourselves into. But no, well educated people still want the quick fix and don't seem to know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods and are still unaware that we have to excercise. Or is it that they can't be bothered to take responcibility for themselves as we increasingly live in a world of entitlement, I hear you say .

Then there is the diet industry, it's size and reach is staggering on top of what I have mentioned above there are TV programs that make entertainment out of overweight people trying to loose weight. These programs are sponsered and funded by the very same industries that produce unhealthy food if over consumed and the diet industry. Then the winners of these programs are the ones that can loose weight the fastest and if you don't or can't, you loose, kicked off and left to your own devises, no support, no follow up, but hey the raitings were great!! I've even read where people deliberately put weight on, some reports say they are instructed to, so that they will be picked for these shows. Andy Warhol said we will all have 15 min of fame but this is a deadly way to achieve it!

We also can't avoid the endless fitness machine, fitness plans, DVD's and juicer adverts that are always the quickest way to build or excercise or drink your way to a new you, a happier you, a complete you. These companies prey on the people that are lonely, vunrable or are looking for that quick fix to prop up their self esteem issues and along the way making a few people very rich.

If I can see it and you can see it, why can't the masses seem to. We have an obesity and diabeties epidemic exploading before our eyes and the more educated we are the worse these problems seem to become. This problem is becoming so large that governments are looking for ways to avoid the bankrupcy that these problems will surely bring. If the spiraling costs are not bought under control, the public purse will not be able to sustain the associated costs of these conditions. 

Personally I think as a society we have forgotten how to live a simple, healthy, rich and forfilled life and it's all about me and not about us. We are isolated from each other, though we live among each other, and the life skills of taking responcibility, common sense, caring for children, cooking, growing your own food, repairing things, making things, respect and community values are not passed down from parent and grandparent to child and we are all, no matter our individual circumstances, the poorer for it.