1.2. Lead-in Discussion. Answer the following questions.

What is to be healthy for you?

Do you avoid eating wrong food and exercise regularly? What is your opinion on fast food; healthy food, organic products? What are your eating habits? Do you often eat out or prefer to eat at home?

Have you ever worried about your weight?

Do you believe that you can really improve your health by maintaining healthy life-style or you think that health is innate?

What is a healthy life-style for you? Do you believe that healthy life-style really matters?

Comment on the statement by Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn. Do you agree/disagree with him?

FOCUS 2

2.1.Scan the article and say how Americans feel about nutrition. Fat America

Americans are fat, and that’s the fact. More than half of adult Americans are overweight, and about 45 million of them are obese, says a recent study. Is it the genes? The inactive American lifestyle? The hamburgers and soda?

Let’s be politically correct.

Obesity is a big problem in the US. It can cause premature death, heart disease and diabetes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans die every year because of disasters related to obesity. Medical experts make a distinction between being overweight and obese. Overweight people, they say, have a body weight that’s too big in proportion to their height. Obese people have an excessive amount of fat in relation to their body mass.

“Fat” people in general prefer to be called “persons of size”, which is the politically correct term. These days no one uses the term “fat”, except adolescent boys on the playground who throw dirt at fat girls.

Haagen Dazs Ice Cream

Doctors are seriously worried about obesity. After all, they see what happens to obese people.

Medical officials want obesity to be considered a public health crisis. Of it isn’t, they say, the country will have a variety of problems, including a decrease in labor productivity, high medical insurance costs and a national shortage of Haagen Dazs chocolate chip ice-cream.

The medical profession launched several marketing campaigns to show Americans how to eat healthier. In one advert, they explained that ketchup is not actually a vegetable.

Virgins & Cheese Products

So why are Americans so fat? Some say, it’s because they spend too much time on the sofa watching television and playing videogames. When given the choice between exercising and lying on the couch throwing potato chips in their mouths, most Americans choose the latter.

Health groups think that junk food is the main culprit. Processed foods and snacks, which are high in preservatives, chemicals and unhealthy fats, form the basis of the American diet. In other countries people eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. But in the US this is rare. Take American cheese as an example. The most popular kind is a glowing orange tube full of chemicals, cholesterol and strange fats. Americans put this “cheese food” on everything including hamburgers. Pizzas and ice cream.

In 2004 Americans spent $110 billion in restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s. In fact studies show that McDonalds’s logo, the yellow M-shaped French fry known as “golden arches” is more recognizable to American children that the Christian cross. Some children have even been seen wearing the arches on a gold chain around their necks.

Fat People Unite

In the US, no oppressed or minority group exists without an organization to support it. For obese people it’s the “American Obesity Association”. This group aims to change public perceptions about obesity. The American Obesity Association wants people to realize that fatness is a disease, not a lifestyle choice. One can try to diet, be engaged in physical activities – it won’t help.

“Fatness is all about genetics”, says Mara Shell. “We were just born that way. Many people think se choose to stuff ten bags of chocolate cookies into our mouth and wash it down with a liter of Coca Cola. But this isn’t true. By the way, are you gonna eat that chocolate cookie?

Fat People Fight Back

Years ago there were lawsuits against the tobacco industry. These days, fat Americans are suing the companies they think are responsible for obesity. They argue that McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken misled them by enticing them with greasy, salty and sugary food and not admitting how unhealthy it was.

“The fast-food industry has wrecked my life,“ said Caesar Barbar, 125 kilos, one of the plaintiffs. Mr. Barbar said he regularly ate fast food until 1996 when his doctor said if he continued, he would explode. He had had two heart attacks and suffered diabetes by the time the lawsuit came to court.

“Of course, I thought it was good for me,“ said Jennifer Mackie, 150 kilos, another plaintiff. “Besides why would McDonald’s lie”?

Crying infants

In June 2002 Southwest Airline , a major American airline, caused a national scandal. They announced that they would start forcing fat people to buy two seats on airplanes. Obesity advocates protested. There were publicity campaigns and the protesters lobbied congress to change the rule. Overweight Americans admitted that a “passenger of size” can inconvenience other people, but argued that people using cell phones, crying infants, old people and people with disabilities can also cause inconvenience to other passengers.

In a press release, the American Obesity Association said, “the airline industry and its passengers have a history of accommodating the elderly, parents with strollers and persons with wheelchairs. So why not accommodate fat people?”

“It’s very easy,” said an anonymous airline employee. “Old ladies don’t take up two seats.”

Both cases are still in court.

And The Winner is…

So what does the future look like for overweight people? Many people are fighting hard to eliminate obesity discrimination. And these days obesity is being seen as a disease and fat people as the victims. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. Either way, “persons of size” have nearly succeeded in making Americans see them as ordinary people…who are just a bit larger.

Source: Cool English Magazine, No. 14. 2007

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