How do we fight obesity?
The U.S. obesity epidemic is born out of dearth of nutritious food and an abundance of food with very little nutrition. In this video, HealthMaker and nutritionist Ashley Koff, RD, discusses what's wrong with the American diet and how we can fix it.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] We are no longer consuming food as it's found in nature. We're consuming a lot of things from a chemistry lab.
The real issue, though, is that we're allowing people to think that just because they can put something into the body that that is nourishing their body.
Calories are extremely available in this country, and nutrients are really not.
This is all really a crisis of nutrient intake going into the body. So the hunger, the child that is able to avoid hunger and not
die from severe hunger, severe malnutrition, actually goes on later in life to be at a greater risk for obesity and the diseases related
to obesity. So what we're really understanding is, again, it's the lack of nutrients going into the body. So I believe fundamentally, obesity--
the biggest issue with obesity is that children from a very young age, and in fact, their parents are predisposing them by not eating quality nutrients.
We're just not building healthy foundations. We are telling people that it's something that you-- an entire meal, a soda, a burger, fries
for $1.99, we're telling them that that is actually a meal. We will not solve this problem by looking at any one group
and saying that it's their responsibility. So when people make the argument that it is the corporate America's responsibility
and they should change their marketing and they should get rid of ads and all of these things and blame it exclusively on them-- and on the flip side,
when corporate America or others blame the individual and say it's your responsibility, everyone is failing. We've been teaching nutrition in a way that does not align
with the body's physiology. So things like telling people how many calories you need to consume in the day or things
like telling people how many grams of something you should have, it doesn't work because it really actually doesn't work in the body.
We do need to focus on education and experience. When children experience good, quality food,
and they get to taste it and they get to interact, and when they learn how something grows, that is the best thing that can happen.
And the second best thing-- or concurrently, simultaneously-- if it happens that they see their parents
doing what their parents are telling them they should be doing, and when they see their physicians doing what the physicians are telling them
they should be doing-- so when we lead by example, when everybody chooses to lead by example, and if everybody comes together and says we
all need to take responsibility for this, then I think we can really change the problem. [AUDIO LOGO]
obesity
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