I happened to catch half an episode of a British show called Supersize vs Superskinny. In it, two people at opposite ends of the typical weight continuum swap diets for a period of time. Then, the heavier person gets to travel to the United States to visit someone even heavier than they are. The examples I saw were barely mobile because of their extreme obesity with other compounding, related complications like Charcot feet due to diabetes. After these emotional visits, the heavy British person returned with the determination to change their eating habits to avoid ending up like their new American acquaintances.
I wonder how much more money is poured into the development, production and marketing of the new obesity and diabetes drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy compared to how much is spent on promotion of healthy eating habits. And, of course, also consider how much is spent on production and marketing of unhealthy foods in this country.
The path of least resistance for many Americans is to eat what is promoted, convenient and often less expensive than really healthy foods. It’s almost as if there exists a great conspiracy between the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry where one branch makes people sick and the other treats or counteracts the symptoms that are triggered by unhealthy types or quantities of food. And both are big, very big, businesses.
We don’t have a robust public health system in this country. The voices advocating reasonable portion sizes and healthful food choices are drowning in the barrage of marketing from the processed foods vendors.
Making healthy dietary and lifestyle choices is a true virtue in today’s America. It’s not like everybody is doing it, so you may feel like you are blazing your own path. It takes effort and requires both learning and discernment.
This dyad of “industries” where one is making people sick and the other is treating them is possibly an unstoppable symbiosis. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help those who really want to achieve better health naturally do so.
Here’s a piece I wrote in 2019:
https://acountrydoctorwrites.blog/2019/02/18/let-food-be-thy-medicine-and-medicine-be-thy-food/