Recently, there’s been a spate of articles (for instance, this one) claiming that for some, the “obsession” with consuming healthy food has increased our anxiety, pushing some of our kids into eating disorders, and generally taking the fun out of life. While I don’t doubt that a few people use dietary information to make themselves and their family miserable, my guess is that those people would find something to obsess over in any case. So my feeling is that these articles mostly fall into the category of “shoot the messenger.”
I recently heard a speaker (I wish I could remember who) say that if “normal” is defined as what most people do, then these days, eating a healthy diet is abnormal behavior!
We’ve got an epidemic, no, a pandemic of obesity in this country. The latest datum: almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds now are obese – not just overweight, obese. The article on this statistic quoted an outside expert as saying, “Without interventions, the next generation “will be at very high risk” for heart disease, high blood pressure, cancers, joint diseases and other problems connected with obesity.”
In the face of this ongoing disaster, I think shooting the messenger is equivalent to blowing ourselves up. So to speak.
