The Obesity Epidemic Why diets and exercise don't work and what does by Robyn Toomath

The Obesity Epidemic by Robyn Toomath, analyzes the actual historical moment where, more than experiencing problems because we are starved, we have problems for an excess of food and most of people suffer of obesity.

What can we do?

Many the hypotheses taken in consideration by the author, from diets, most of them a real failure to pills able to reduce weight and drastic operations.
Unfortunately, in big obesity exercise is not a great answer. But sedentariety can conducts at the grave we must  remember this.

Food means a lot and what we eat today can also saying where we live, what we do, and what we decide to introduce in our body. Plus of course the quantity of food we introduce.

Big questions the one of the author like: urbanization reduced physical exercise?
It is in fact commonly known that when there weren't yet cars and it was necessary to afford to a city walking for 20-30 km  health was better for sure.

There was poverty but what it was cultivated was genuine, because there weren't yet tractors, there weren't pesticides and it says a lot again.

Then new life-style started to make the difference. The arrival of  TV for example. It absorbed people and people became and are still becoming fat watching the TV, adds the author. Lack of sleeping time but also food consumed without any kind of exercise doesn't help.

The author writes at some point: "The emergence of the processed food industry has resulted in our eating things which are no longer identifiable as foods."

But where it started this trend of eating too much food?
Global diet or, a new way of eating started, history, like a trend thanks to the appearance of supermarkets everywhere.
Supermarkets are the main sources where people buy the so-called junk food and all that beverages plenty of sugar and calories and so on.
It is estimated that an American ate everyday 3200 calories in the 1980s and 3900 by the year 2000.

The question will ask then Robyn Toomath is: are we free when we buy food?

Then the very interesting story of food rationing during the last Second World War and what happened later when peace was back to the normality.

Toomath flew from San Francisco to Boston once and she noticed in the city of Boston is banned the sale of sweetened drink and in general Bostonians don't tend to eat too much junk food.

The author will tell us what happened in Australia when Coca-Cola decided to start a war against obesity thinking that maybe she has a role in all of it.

Who is obese or better: who eat unhealthy food? Because everything starts from there.

All that women, people in general, children, of course who tend to stay outside (or too much inside without control from their parents for example if children) for work during the day and once returned home don't tend to prepare a good dish but just a hamburger and some french fries. Pretty quick and fried the second ones, if you have children close to you or a husband maybe something else would be better.

Food can be considered for the poorest like a reward for the work well done considering that this one is the only gratification that there is around. 
Maybe eating is also a sort of "revenge" for poor people against that  poverty they knew in the past.
There wasn't a lot of abundance of food decades ago just we must try to see if the food we ingest now is healthy like the one we ate 40-50 years ago.

It's a story of poor people but I would add also that sometimes people are not educated to eating well because it's also this one the problem.
These people tend to  eat cheaper and higher in calories.

For fighting the problem of obesity and the social costs that there is, governments are trying to provide answers in various directions.

In the while what to do for changing bad habits? The author is a doctor and she knows very well that a diabetic won't never want to lose weight, but of course she can tells him/her of eating more properly adding fibers, muesli during the breakfast, fresh fruits, veggies but mainly this doctor wants to encourage everyone to cook and eat all together home cooked-food.
Plus, again and again: if you have some land, plant! Plant veggies, plant tomatoes, some potatoes, zucchini, plant herbs you will need for your cooking because you won't add pesticides to them and you will eat healthily. Nothing is more good than eating your own food.

I want to add a poster the author keeps in her office.
It says:

1- Buy with thought
2- Cook it with care
3- Use less wheat and meat
4- Buy local food
5- Serve just enough
6- Use what is left
7- Don't waste it.

This poster the author remarks was printed by the US Food Administration in 1917. What did we become in the while?

Toomath suggests of walking per a hour everyday, asking us to influence our environment speaking about this immense problematic that food is.

Our area wants to return at the biologic and one of our priests wants to restore the old water mill. Maybe our little community has traced a good project.

Robyn Toomath encourages pregnant girls to eat healthily and later breast feed. Not only: it's better don't park our babies close to the TV, or PCS or smart phones, but it's better to read them fairy-tales, a book, baking something delicious with them, spending our time with them in a park.

The end of the book a great. I loved it. A motto that says a lot: good luck!

Highly highly recommended.

I thank Johns Hopkins University Press for this beautiful and informative book!



Anna Maria Polidori