Piggy People

There is a cultural quality here that involves honesty and bluntness. If you are thin, you’re referred to as skinny, loudly. If you’re a little chubby, you can be renamed Fatty and so on with obvious physical qualities. Getting someone’s attention by saying “Hey ugly!” will never be appropriate if you ask me but I can’t say I hate being called pretty or cool! Just because we don’t do this in the states does not mean that Americans don’t have obvious characteristics. As a whole, we are fat! I will apologize for my lack of tact but I will be talking about it. We are so piggy in so many respects, it should be embarrassing. We climb in our big cars burning up gasoline, go to the grocery store or fast food and buy little more than packaging and food so processed, you forget that it was once raw ingredients. Think about hundred calorie packs of cookies. As you rip open a package or two, you probably can’t guess half of the listed ingredients or where they come from. The metal and plastic industrial encasing went through its own lengthy process of creation. They sit on the shelf, ten little packets are further enveloped in cardboard or plastic or both. What a nightmare of resources and waste! We haven’t even mentioned the factory and transportation factors. As we munch on those snacks, we are munching on an expensive and material intensive process without hesitation. Food, drinks and toys are masking the factory process, money wasted, and consequences to the environment; not to mention our own health.

Let’s hop in the car and buy a derivative of coffee in a huge thick paper cup with a plastic lid and a cardboard sleeve. Throw a napkin, a mixing stick and a straw in the mix and we have more trash than drink. Who grew the coffee, how did it get here, and how much are the pickers making? Where are those cows that gave up the milk? They are probably in land that used to be intact forest and those pickers are probably not making much. One glass of milk takes 53 gallons of water to produce. It is a piggy way we live and we like it. For the past year I have been craving a trip to Starbuck’s with its hot drinks, warm colors and John Mayer serenading the customers. It is just that, in general, we are so not conscientious about our way of life that we are taking way too much of the pie and then getting really fat and ill.

In the U.S., over half of the adults and a quarter of the children are overweight. By not taking care of our body, we are literally making ourselves sick with diabetes, heart problems and cancer. While obesity affects the entire population, poorer and minority demographics are disproportionately impacted. We spend twice as much per capita on health care than any other country. Meanwhile, tons of people are enduring malnutrition with nearly one hundredth of the health care costs, $7,129 US per year to Haiti’s $83. Many African countries are even lower. How can we be letting this happen, putting earphones in and complaining about midriff chub while 80% of Haiti’s population lives below the poverty line and over half are food insecure? They don’t have money for transportation to get to a clinic and we are giving ourselves chronic conditions by eating too much and moving too little. It is like we are being tortured by the success and technology we have created.

Then, there comes the weight loss industry. A $33 billion a year industry (the approximate GDP of Ethiopia) infiltrates TV, magazines, grocery stores, and the internet. Now that we are fat, we should probably spend loads of money on trying to get thin. Instead of promoting cooking with more produce and less crap and outside exercise, the cheaper and more effective solutions, they sell microwave false food, once again locked in and unimaginable amount of material. Without any statistics, I would venture that the amount Americans spend on diet soda could pay for health care improvements in many developing countries. If this sounds like a guilt trip, maybe it is but I am as culpable as anyone. They are patterns that are hard to break. Maybe you love your trip to the smoothie shop or your egg mcmuffin every morning. Those hundred calorie packs could be your perfect little snack that leaves a smile on your face.

I just believe that if we are doing it, we should be conscious of it. Buying food with forty ingredients and then complaining about belly fat is not good for ourselves or the kids (those impressionable people who are becoming addicted to fatty processed food and getting heavier younger and younger). These habits are not great for the world’s resources either. I think some improvements are pretty simple. Clearly it is not like we can change our consumer habits, improve our health and send our health care savings to Ethiopia. We can, however, do things a little differently that lead to long term benefits and can slim down our impact on the world.

We could mostly buy whole ingredients. Buy the potato instead of the baggy of sour cream and onion potato chips. We really could pay attention to packaging. The cloth bags in the grocery store are great but oxymoronic when you fill them with cereal, cookies, and drinks that are all double and triple packaged. Buying in bulk is cheaper and more responsible. It is a matter of hogging less. Another change could be going out to eat less. Whether it is fast food, fancy Italian or pastries and coffee, we spend so much unnecessary money and usually have no idea how unhealthy and high calorie it really is. Make some treats at home and indulge at these places knowing that it is special. A pumpkin pie latte with whip sounds amazing to me right now. It probably costs $4.25 by now and weighs in at a high calorie count. Having one a week is understandable but one a day is a little piggy and let’s admit, it dulls the experience! Buying fair trade and organic is usually more ethical if you can afford it. It should also be said that we should be walking or doing some sort of activity. We could drive everywhere, see the world through a fancy phone and then break open that bag of chips. We could also go on a hike and take a sandwich and fruit and maybe enjoy it.

We would be more hopeful about the future if we were a bit more conscious of what we are doing. Even a gradual move toward healthier, less grabby lives could level the world playing field. Also, change can be kind of fun!!