So . . . obesity is an epidemic in today's world, it leads to diseases and death, blah blah blah, whatever. Anyone who reads the news, or even just the headlines, is aware that people are generally fatter than they were before (even a more recent before, not just fatter than hunter-gatherers), and this is not good for society (less cake for me). Like most social ills, however, solutions to the problem are in short supply. Lots of suggestions have been made, from mandating that schoolchildren be physically active for two hours a day (back in my day, we wanted to be active - it was called recess) to removing fattening beverages from vending machines in city-owned buildings, to free liposuction for all (ok, I made that last one up. Sadly.).
But the one that keeps coming around, the one that consistently rears its ugly, skinny head, is education. We have to teach people how not to get fat, or that getting fat is bad, or that if you go to Baskin-Robbins three times a week (day?) you will not maintain your girlish figure. And I have a problem with that, because I don't think the problem is lack of education or knowledge.
Now I'm not great believer in our intelligence as a species. Heck, this entire blog is devoted, more or less, to the bad decisions that people make. But I think the fat-food choices people are making are more about self-delusion and decision biases than knowledge. I mean, the 400-pound guy I saw shovelling fries into his gaping maw at a Mickey D's in Georgia has to know on some level that oily slivers of potato do not constitute a balanced meal. But he does it anyway, which is his right. From experience I can say that some day I hope he realizes that he also has a right to wear a clean t-shirt.
It's not that people don't know unhealthy food is unhealthy - we just conveniently ignore this fact, or rationalize it, or figure we can live with expanding figures (personally, I use the last one, which makes me feel very empowered, and this feeling of well-being entitles me to extra desserts). It's not as though Burger King or Carl's Jr. (still consider this tremendously oddly punctuated) has anything to gain by making their food any unhealthier than it needs to be; in other words, they're not sneaking in extra fat or sugar, but rather just enough to make it taste the way we want. Thanks to "education" initiatives, the (anti-)nutritional info is right there for our perusal prior to ordering, but no one cares.
In Canada, a country of thirty-something-million people, there are seventeen million restaurant meals served a day. And we all know how healthily we eat at restaurants. If wanted to take a salad to work, we'd make a salad. Instead we prioritize other things (can't make a salad, Extreme Couponing is on!), and these choices all add up. So when we get a Southwest Taco salad at Wendy's (590 calories) we think we're making a wise decision, but we also know that it's not going to be as good for us as the salad we'd make for ourselves.
If you're going to educate, make the education about stuff we generally don't know, like the biases that cause us to rationalize or make unhealthy choices (see Brian Wansink's book Mindless Eating for a fantastic summary of these). We know it's not healthy to be fat and we know that junk food doesn't make us skinny. If you've been reading this blog for a while you know I don't advocate government intervention (ban sugar!). So if you want to help, if this is your cause, do it in an intelligent way rather than insulting our intelligence.
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