America

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Americans and the generation I'm growing up in. The more I look into it the more I feel like everyone is really messed up. 

I hear so much everyday (possibly because I'm into health and trying to eat right) about how fat American's are and how bad all the fast food diet is. 300,000 people die from obesity related causes every year. That means that 300,000 ate themselves to death, in a year.

Then on the other side of the spectrum there are TONS of people with eating disorders trying to make themselves skinnier. They also are destroying their bodies, but in a method that involves more control. Over 11 million Americans are diagnosed with having an eating disorder.

• 27% of girls 12-18 have significant symptoms
  
• 31% of female college students
  
• 46% of 10 year old girls are dieting, have a fear of “fatness” or are binge eating
  
• Doctors are seeing a growing group of women in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s with eating disorders
  
• Although less common, boys and men can also have eating disorders, especially self-induced vomiting and inappropriate laxative use 

(http://www.eatingdisorderfoundation.org/EDFFAQ.htm)
 
 10 year old girls! You know where they are getting this from right? Their moms. I used to have a friend, and her mom had recently lost a lot of (unhealthy) weight. The problem was is that it started focusing my friend on her body and her weight. The girl was taller than me and thin as a rail, and yet all she could talk about were her diets and how fat she was. She was sitting next to me one day and commented on how fat her thighs were, so since we were sitting next to each other I told her to compare our legs. Mine were quite a bit bigger and I said that if her thighs were fat then I was an elephant.

It used to drive me up a wall when I was working in a restaurant and some little 6 year old girl would come in  to eat with her mom and order diet coke. I wanted to slap her mom because:
A. Diet coke has aspartame, which is linked to head tumors.
B. If your going to diet, don't teach your kid that coke, which destroys the lining of you stomach and intestines, is ok because it says "Diet"
C. Why the hell is a 6 year old kid worried about her weight? That's morbidly disturbing and her parents are robbing her of her childhood.


I know you can argue that maybe she "likes" the taste of diet coke, but she wouldn't like it if it wasn't in her house in the first place, courtesy of her parents. Try getting her to "like" some juice or something that will actually give her body what it needs to function. Let her decide to destroy her body when she's older and smart enough to know the difference.


It would always kill me to, on the other hand, when an extremely fat little kid would come in, and their parents would let them order off the adult menu. Really? There that big and you think you should feed them an 1800 calorie Country Fried Steak, with 300 calories of extra gravy, and take the corn on the cob off for more mashed potatoes and gravy (500 more calories), start off with a 1800 calorie wing appetizer, and end with a 1200 calorie dessert. Wow, model parents right there. If you love your children you should take the time to ensure they are healthy and eat right. Not indulge them in whatever they want because kids are too young to decide what's best for them.