[Marxism] Cuban sanctions linked to Obesity in americans

[Pat Costello]

Greg MacDonald wrote:

In terms of time pressure--I've always been a bit skeptical of the "I 
don't have time" crowd. You know, I' don't have time to eat right, 
exercise, get massage, work out, etc. Bullshit. I always tell people 
that if health is a priority they'll make the time.

me: 

so i guess Phil Gramm is right. we're just a nation of whiners.

by the way, obesity is not just a problem in the US. is a growing
epidemic in many countries. Mexico is close behind the US in obesity
rates and the UK is third. 

Lajany Otum says:

"Michael Pollan sometimes has interesting things to say, but this is cobblers. The 
US has had a surplus grain problem, and has been dumping it on the world
under such guises as PL480 and the Mutual Security Act since the 1950's 
(See Darrel Moen, "The postwar Japanese agricultural debacle." available at
http://www.dgmoen.net/essays_index.html).
Essentially overproduction has been built into US agriculture since the 1950's,
by the form of price supports adopted under the New Deal, and compounded
by the technological treadmill ever since."


me: a good point but obesity was not a problem until the 70's. My point
was that government policy (that caters to agribusiness) has been a major
factor in obesity rates. Overproduction is another. The incessant marketing
of processed foods is factor. In the 1980's, the reagan administration
lifted many regulations on marketing to children, which greatly increased
the number of ads seen by children, many of them for candy and candy-like
cereals. The growth of fast food restaurants, a lifestyle where people
people eat in their cars or at their desks rather than cook a meal and
sit down with their families, urban sprawl that forces people to drive
rather than walk: all of these things contribute.

Capitalism is a system that is not simply unjust and unsustainable,
it is unhealthy.
To blame the individual as Greg MacDonald does, for not resisting the
societal pressures just seems snobbish and republican party-ish.