Is obesity a choice or a disease?

Monday, July 19, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: obesity, ethical questions, food choice

https://www.naturalnews.com/001416.html

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There are a lot of people who agree with this assessment about obesity. There's no question that obesity is a result of a person's daily lifestyle choices. However, one problem with outright blaming obese people for being so obese is that educational information on nutrition, foods, grocery store products, soft drinks, fast foods and other dietary sources simply aren't readily available. There's no easy way for most people to actually get the information they need to make healthier choices. As a result, they may have no idea that what they're eating will cause obesity and chronic disease.

The federal government isn't helping, either. With virtually no money spent on disease prevention, the government is practically guaranteeing that an entire generation will end up hooked on a lifetime of prescription drugs thanks to the fact that they're all diseased from making poor nutritional choices. This policy to avoid prevention, by the way, helps ensure the profits of pharmaceutical companies (darlings of the Bush Administration). See, your good health isn't profitable to anyone, but your chronic disease helps generate billions of dollars in pharmaceutical profits.

On the other hand, even when most people are made aware of the health dangers of foods, they keep on eating the garbage foods anyway! People must certainly know that ice cream and soft drinks promote obesity, and yet you see it time and time again at the supermarket: loads of ice cream tubs and 12-packs of soft drinks in the shopping carts of 300-pound people who can barely squeeze into the checkout lanes. Clearly, this is a personal responsibility problem: these people need to stop making excuses and start making better choices about foods and groceries.

So, as always, it's a complex issue, and there's a little bit of blame for everyone. But there's no doubt that a properly informed individual can take control over their health outcome and utterly avoid obesity and chronic disease, especially if they engage in optimum nutrition, take various nutritional supplements and add superfoods to their diets.