Personal Responsibility in Obesity Epidemic

You may call it laziness since technically I'm not coming up with my own blog fodder, but I call it resourcefulness. I found the following article over the weekend from Texas A&M's Battalion. Great articulation of the lack of personal responsibility when it comes to our nation's view of health, and the resulting obesity "epidemic."
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Food fads
Trend diets and pop culture are not making strides toward ending the 'obesity epidemic'
By Tim Aylsworth

Obesity is a national epidemic. Richard L. Atkinson, president of the American Obesity Association, wrote, "We know now that the health effects of obesity are similar or greater than smoking, problem drinking and being poor." With this perilous epidemic on the rise, one might think that real steps were being made to squelch this threat. In reality, obesity has become another tool for get-rich-quick scams and false hopes. The real problem is a deeply-rooted attitude, and it cannot be remedied without a serious change of perspective.

These pseudo-solutions are everywhere. The first layer is the never-ending laundry list of fad diets. The next layer is made up of amphetamines and instant-weight-loss pills. Other vital aspects include misinformation and fictional nutrition guides, which use meaningless jargon to assert their validity. The icing on the cake is the utter lack of personal responsibility.

After blaming the diets that don't work, the pills that cause heart disease and the genetics that people don't understand, there is one obvious culprit. The sinister maniacs who go around selling the food are clearly to blame. In 2003, McDonald's was sued by two teenagers who claimed the restaurant was the cause of their obesity. Apparently, personal responsibility is a thing of the past. These days, if someone has a problem, the rational thing to do is incriminate someone else.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet threw the case out. According to Sweet, "If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of super-sized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain, it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses." That is shocking. Perhaps the obesity epidemic has something to do with eating in excess. No one saw that coming.

Some weight problems might be genetic, and a handful of people really cannot help their condition, but the vast majority of obese individuals are a product of their own choices. Those who frequently shirk responsibility for their condition are often the same ones that fall into the pop culture myths of instant weight loss.

There is something intuitively wrong with assuming that a person can eat food they love, eat an abundance of it and lose weight. The real answer lies in moderation, following instinctive guidelines and legitimate education. This is a simple concept, but education and temperance are not similar to the quick fixes on the bookshelves. These are the backbone of a healthy lifestyle, and they are almost entirely absent in this culture.