Gaining Weight is a Problem?

Is it just me are we all surrounded by the diet hysteria? A quick search on Google shows

that “6.8 million Canadian adults ages 20 to 64 were overweight, and an additional 4.5 million were obese” which happens to be more

than a third of Canada’s population. So maybe it’s not me after all, it’s an epidemic and you don’t have to look far to see it. Of course marketing gurus are all over this and they’re trying to milk it for what it’s worth. For instance as I was walking through the supermarket today I saw for the first time the “100 calorie Doritos” bags, which basically consist of 2 chips. In another aisle I saw airplane style Coke cans also claiming 100 calories. Go into any other aisle and your senses are assaulted by “fat free” this and “baked, not fried” that. At the core of all of this is the same crap quality food that caused obesity in the first place, but in smaller portions. Have people no will power to stop eating chips from the big bags? Or to stop drinking soft drinks altogether? Do we need to miniaturize everything we buy to miniaturize ourselves?

Thinking about the measures the effort that people have to go through to slim up I’m surprised at myself for that realizing the irony behind the phrase “gaining weight”. To me gaining is associated with something positive. People don’t gain problems, stress or bad health, so why do they gain weight? Maybe I’m just stuck with the North American mentality. Food is abundant here and accessible to all. For the majority of the world gaining weight is a good thing, something desired, something out of the norm. Obesity is an “epidemic” only in North America. Nowhere else in the world are you going to hear people complain about having too much food... The more I think about this dichotomy the more I feel like we’re living in an Orwellian world.