Obesity

Obesity, and the myriad ailments that eventually accompany it, has become a modern epidemic in America. Foreign cultures influenced by America also suffer this pernicious health problem--or will, as they emulate our cultural and culinary practices more and more.

Of all social pathology, over-eating is the most comprehensible. This unyielding behavior is rooted directly in the stress, boredom, alienation, and plain-old unhappiness caused by our oppressive, modern money-and-profit system. The fact that so many people overeat speaks for itself, regarding the urgent need to change the way we do things.

Specifically, here are the pathological reasons we overeat, under capitalism. You will note the overlap between some of these reasons:

1. We use food for enjoyment. This is because economic realities such as lack of money and inordinately busy schedules routinely deny us other, more healthy forms of pleasure and enjoyment.

2. We employ a rationale that because we've experienced stress, a hardship, or an extra expenditure of effort or energy, we "deserve" to eat, and will do so to "reward" ourselves.

In regard to this and the prior reason, we must ask ourselves why the lives of so many people are so bankrupt that putting a jelly donut into their mouths constitutes the most pleasure or satisfaction they'll have all day.

Or we may consider the flip side of the preceding question:  why are the lives of so many people so utterly stressful that they regularly--if not continually--experience an uncontrollable, overwhelming impulse to stick that jelly donut--and a lot of other food--into their mouths, again, and again, and again, in what can only be ultimately seen as a painful and counterproductive coping pattern?

One way to approach the answer to these questions is to rhetorically pose another:  in fact, why wouldn't the lives of most people under capitalism be bankrupt, given that the principal goal of the system is not human happiness, but the generation and accumulation of as much money as possible for a tiny group of corporate owners? Accordingly, the entire system in all its detail operates to that end, and not for any other purpose--certainly not to maximize my happiness, your happiness, or the happiness of the greatest number, the overwhelming mass of the global population.

3. We eat because we are under stress. In this case, the activity of eating, which is to say selecting food, preparing food, and eating food, the latter activity consisting of cutting food, masticating (chewing) food, and swallowing food, provides an actual physical release of stored bodily stress, much as hitting a ball or taking a jog would.

   Moreover, sustained stress will eventually cause us to seek a state of medication, described next.

4. We eat to medicate ourselves, which is to say, to achieve the same physiological state of torpor experienced by the drug addict after ingesting their tranquilizer narcotic, or "downer." Or by someone obtaining the desired state legally, through use of a prescription narcotic such as Valium. After eating a large meal, Thanksgiving dinner, say, we can sink down into our comfy chair in a drowsy and pleasurable haze, frequently allowing the cable television to wash over us. Thus is immersion into the fantasy world of television also sometimes a co-factor in our self-medication.

   By achieving such a physio-emotional state we effectively "escape" from our environment and worldly cares for a period of time. Make no mistake--food can be a powerful narcotic, and we, along with millions upon millions of other people employ it as such, as a makeshift shield against the mind-numbing and hyper-stressful lives of slavery forced upon us by capitalism, a system where corporate rule, corporate profit, and ultimately the dollar bill are our merciless masters.

Indeed, lowered caloric consumption is reasonably linked to a variety of health benefits; however, the catch-22 of capitalism is inescapable:  our misery and stress compels us to seek a drug, and food--legal, ubiquitous, affordable, and delicious--fits the bill exactly. We simply will not see a reduction in food consumption until the social and economic stresses that compel us to over-consume are eliminated.

These four reasons for pathological eating under capitalism are underscored, facilitated, catalyzed, and directly and indirectly encouraged by:

1. The advertising industry.

2. The ubiquity and low-cost of food, generally.

3. Social reinforcement from family and friends.

Dieting

Diets are notoriously ineffective because the urge to overeat is so closely linked to economic and other stresses, that are hard to shake in an oppressive money-and-profit-based society.

Worse, certain diet regimens are expensive and time-consuming, and thus generally out of the reach of many people. For example, the Atkins "controlled-carb" diet depends on copious consumption of the most expensive food available--meat, and typically not in the form of hamburger, but instead every other form of expensive meat available.

Conclusion

Of all the social problems caused by our money-and-profit system, the relationship between capitalism and overeating is among the most straightforward and easiest to understand. Ultimately, capitalist societies are obese societies because capitalist societies are stressed-out, miserable societies, and food is the "perfect storm" of narcotics:  convenient, affordable, legal, and pleasurable.

Indeed, did Erich Fromm assert, as a principal thesis in The Sane Society, that any society whose organizational basis (ours is capitalism) is incongruent or out-of-synch with the real needs and nature of humankind, is a society that will not last, and will remain pathological while it does.

Thus, as long as there is capitalism, which is to say as long as we are slaves--we will require potent sources of escape from that ugly and painful reality, and of those sources food will likely remain the escape of choice. Sure, there are practical ways we can attempt to control our eating (see below), and we will meet with varying degrees of success in amount of weight lost, and longevity of that loss. But this will always remain a difficult, rear-guard action.

While it may not help our waistline in the short term, we can find solace, and indeed, courage, in the knowledge that there is  a permanent solution to this vexing problem; it will come when we establish, and live our lives under, the relatively stress-free, beautiful system predicated on human cooperation and, indeed, brotherly love:  a Cooperative Society.

Join the movement today!

Health, generally, and obesity, specifically, are relevant, powerful, and critical areas for study by newcomers, or study and information-dissemination for the interested BOMA activist.

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Practical Methods for Weight-Control

In terms of "practical" methods for weight-control, this writer, vince de benedeto, interested in health and nutrition for many years, offers the following suggestions and perspective:

In terms of a "practical" method for weight-control, I can recommend the controlled carbohydrate "Paleolithic diet," which asserts, and is based on, the notion that humankind is biologically and metabolically best suited to consume the diet our species evolved successfully under over millions of years, a diet consisting principally of about 35% lean meats and 65% nutritious vegetables, and little else save perhaps berries, honey, and anything else that is obtainable literally by one's own hand and very simple tools. Note that the "Paleolithic" and "paleo" diets are different.

Additionally, it is probably true that not every diet is suitable for every person, although the Paleolithic diet may be the one exception, since it appears to be the manner of eating of our species for just about all of the millions of years of our successful evolution, and thus would appear to be the manner of eating responsible for that successful evolution. Thus, the human body is optimized for this diet, and, the theory asserts, responds poorly to other kinds of nutrition, like grains, milk, and most fruit. The theory states that this poor response manifests typically in our plethora of inexplicable "modern" diseases. And, of course, we know that the aforementioned foods, high in carbohydrate and sugar, cause definite weight gain.

Additionally, key to losing weight is reducing stress as much as possible. Simplifying one's life is usually very helpful if not essential in accomplishing this, even though such simplification might require taking on fewer projects and reducing one's number of activities, including those that are work-related. This sort of reduction could, of course, result in loss of income; therefore, readjusting one's purchasing and lifestyle expectations might be considered crucial to this overall process.

Of course, persons of any income level other than "high" may be legitimately unable to reduce their incomes, as they may already be insufficient--and we are again faced with one of the many dead ends, brick walls, and conundrums caused by capitalism. Under certain conditions even persons of high income may face this dilemma.

You might facilitate stress reduction, and life simplification, over the long term by bringing your life in line with the love ethic, the notion of brotherly love. Developing the capacity to live this way takes time, and can comprise a difficult road, especially initially. It can bring its own increases in stress, along with, or before yielding, decreases. But in your life over the long run, if love is practiced consistently, deeply, actively, consciously, and properly; if love is practiced in a manner that facilitates and underscores the development of character, and the development of an increasingly deep and present awareness of the connectedness between all people, and a real and growing feeling of love toward them, you may sense a slowly growing, very deeply-rooted, interior peace and tranquility, especially as regards other people, your orientation toward them, and your fundamental way of seeing and understanding them and their behavior--often the area of our greatest stress.

This change within you may translate into a less pronounced or pointed compulsion to eat.

For assistance or perspective with, or on, the love ethic and its integration into your life, please contact BOMA.

Best of Luck!