Television & Obesity-Now obesity is entertainment

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By Bob Gedeon

Just recently my wife and kids started to watch the Food Network Channel in the United States. On this network you can watch any self proclaimed chef indulge him or herself on any food you desire to see. The problem is you start to get hungry after you start to watch shows on that network. They talk about food as though it was an art. In fact in most of the shows they broadcast you come away thinking preparing food is really fun. However, there is an old saying in America; do you eat to live or do you live to eat. It doesn’t take but 10 minutes after watching any show on this network to figure out which slogan of the two Americans cling to. What clings to most Americans is fat. Obesity is so rampant in the United States that we have supersized not only our candy bars but entire meals.

How obese is America? The latest numbers are 58 million Americans are overweight; 40 million are obese; 3 million morbidly obese. By the way morbid obesity is a step closer to the grim reaper. Only 26 percent of U.S. adults engage in vigorous leisure-time physical activity three or more times per week. About 59 percent of adults do no vigorous physical activity at all in their leisure time.

In the United States one of the most successful television programs dealing with cooking first started with Graham Kerr, better known as the Galloping Gourmet. Mr. Kerr didn’t have the elaborate kitchens or any rock band performing on his show or any food challenge network. He didn’t have any competition to outdo another chef nor did he step into Hell’s Kitchen to make other peoples life miserable. What made him interesting to watch was that he loved food and he loved the people in his audience. More importantly his desire was to teach you how to cook; and how to cook for the people you loved, not how to love food, and therein lies the difference from his show and the cooking shows we see today.

In America if you want to see the ramifications of our food obsessions then our wonderful television networks came up with a show called “The Biggest Loser”. Now you can sit in front of your TV like a couch potato and see the most obese people you will ever see in your life struggling to lose weight and win a huge sum of money. Obesity has now become a form of entertainment in the United States disguised in the form of a TV show that is designed to help these people wean off of the Food Channel and whatever ever else they watch. We have forgotten that there is one thing obesity does do to people; it kills them. I guess people can bury themselves with a fork. My kids love the show because they say it encourages them to stay trim and to keep the weight off so you won’t look like “those people”. Then with a flick of the TV remote control they like all other Americans are back to watching the Food Network Channel where they beg me to make the recipes they see on their favorite TV programs from that channel. Funny thing is you won’t see reruns of “The Biggest Loser” on the Food Network Channel”. I wonder why!

What is now worse is parents have now passed the food baton to their children. Now are kids are becoming obese and some morbid obese. The percentage of overweight children, ages 6-11 has nearly doubled since the early 1980's. To tackle this problem ABC Television ran a show a few years ago known as Shaq’s Big Challenge. It stared the great basketball player known as Shaquille O’Neal. What I loved about this program was it followed the life of many morbid obese children whom Shaq seriously wanted to help. It showed what no program has ever shown in the US and that is the hard reality that losing weight is tough and kids need our help. The show lasted only one season. Even its website no longer is operating and it was a great website to help families with their weight problems which leads me to review a website known as GroupReceipies.com. Here comes another American website to glorify food.

On this site you can have a social like connection with people who share their recipes and stories about their lives. In fact the website states Group Recipes wants to be the world's neatest food site, from meeting other food lovers to nifty recipe predictions and taste compatibility.
This website is awesome from its functionality to the way it is designed to the great social connection it plays off of food; but there lies the problem again. It uses the term “Food Lovers”. In fact people on the site are described as “Foodies”.

Funny thing though, the more I looked at the site I really didn’t see too many pictures of Foodies. In fact most Foodies used other images or odd designs rather than photos of themselves. I wonder why! Well time to go. Writing about food has now made me hungry. Until next time see you at the refrigerator.

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