You turn on the evening news just as the health segment begins. As the camera pans across overweight, seemingly headless torsos walking down a city street, the anchor's voice intones that the percentage of overweight Americans has reached a new all-time high, or that yet another ailment has been linked to obesity. The implication is that if overweight Americans hear the grim statistics one more time, they will get off their (lazy, oversized) bottoms and finally shed some pounds.
What few—if any—of these news reports bother to acknowledge is that the "obesity epidemic" does not exist in a vacuum. In fact, given the changes in food production and activity levels over the last century, it's little wonder that nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
This doesn't mean that we should just give in and be unhealthy. It does mean that we must acknowledge all the ways our society makes it so much easier to be fat than thin before we can start consciously resisting this culture.
