Americans are obsessed with food. We count calories, we count fat, and at any given time a third of us are on a diet, yet each year obesity has risen significantly over the last 15 years. In fact, it has doubled. So what gives? We simply don’t know how to eat. We don’t know how to enjoy food and fellowship in a way that is healthy.
We make poor food choices when we reach for processed foods, fast foods that are laden with transfats and simple carbohydrates that are killers. And the portion sizes of food have tripled in the last 10 years. The average American consumes almost 3,500 calories per day; most of those calories are from poor nutrition sources, such as sodas, fast food, etc.
The Food industry is at least partially to blame with its marketing and packaging practices and its gradual increase of sodium, high fructose corn syrup and other corn and soy derivatives. Not unlike the tobacco industry that hooked people on cigarettes by gradually increasing nicotine, the food industry has done the same.
What can we do to reclaim the simple pleasures of eating good food in season with people we love? What can we do to stop this unhealthy obsession with food that is destroying our health and our happiness? What are your ideas?
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