Opinion
 

Expanding waists, shrinking funds

By Lynn Meyer

Americans love photographs. One glance provides instant information. They seem so honest that America has come to rely on them, even to the point that they are depended upon to convey common sense. How else can Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me be explained?

Super Size Me is the visual diary of Spurlock's McDonald's experiment, where he questions what effects fatty foods have on our population by performing a 30-day experiment of eating nothing but McDonald's, America's favorite fast food.

Unlike HIV/AIDS, another deadly epidemic in this country, obesity is no secret; it is not easily hidden. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 65 percent of American adults and 13 percent of children in this country are overweight. But we don't need numbers to be persuaded that our national health is waning. Walking downtown is as effective as reading the latest statistics.

And that is precisely the problem.

Pictures can be deceiving. While more Americans are getting fatter, more Americans are also getting hungrier. Last year, 12 million families in the United States worried they did not have enough money to buy food. And like obesity, the problem is growing. 2003 was the third consecutive year in which the United States Department of Agriculture reported an increase in the number of our nation's hungry.

As with obesity, experts believe McDonald's is partly to blame.

The era of the photograph has accustomed us to associate hunger with skeletal foreign babies with round, airtight stomachs -- more balloon than baby. But in this country, in the era of dirty, cheap fast food, hunger and obesity co-exist. According to University of North Carolina associate professor of nutrition Barbara Laraia, we have this phenomenon because low income families are buying high-calorie fast food that is psychologically satisfying, but nutritionally void.

Unfortunately, as poverty continues to increase in America we can expect to see the disturbing trends of obesity and hunger do the same. Food is an elastic expenditure, unlike rent and utilities.

The issue of obesity is more than skin deep. It's about more than proper diet and exercise. It's time for America to take the time to look at the statistics and listen to the experts. It's about making sure the very people in our society who cannot afford health problems are not resigned to a lifestyle that fosters heart disease, diabetes, and liver and kidney failure. We can't expect pictures to tell the whole story, unless we prepare for a bitter ending.

Meyer, a columnist for the Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dccampus@mail.uh.edu.