Health is, ultimately, the product of diet and exercise/physical activity. You get out what you put in. Everybody knows this.
The problem is…one of the problems, for there are many…ok so a few of the problems are, as others have pointed out…ultimately come down to housing and city planning.
The problem is, we somehow can’t figure out how to get diverse, fresh food, within a walkable/bikeable distance of everybody. So that leaves a few options:
Be car-dependent, or
Buy shelf-stable (or frozen, or more preservative than foodstuff) food from a place within walking distance (which also means buying no more than what you can carry at a time), or
Dine-in, take-out, or drive-thru
It also doesn’t help that most American’s are overworked and can’t find half an hour to cook an actual meal, let alone sit down and enjoy it. We’re all burning the candle on both ends trying to make ends meet. And our food selections allow us to pick two out of “fast, cheap, healthy”.
Cheap and Healthy? Will cost you time.
Fast and Healthy? Will cost you money.
Fast and Cheap? Will cost you health.
We don’t have a surplus of any of those things…but the one that’s easiest to ignore (until it isn’t) is health. And so that’s the bank we draw our credit on.
Now add car-dependency on top, and we can find the time to at least go grocery shopping maybe once a week. We find the fresh produce is expensive (and probably also harboring parasites), and won’t last a whole week in the fridge…but we also kinda feel like maybe we should eat a vegetable every now and then, so we get some…but most of the groceries are gonna have to last that whole week, and will need to be fast and cheap…
It sucks, but hey, it’s the best country in the world (or so I was told through 12 years of forced education).
Health is, ultimately, the product of diet and exercise/physical activity. You get out what you put in. Everybody knows this.
The problem is…one of the problems, for there are many…ok so a few of the problems are, as others have pointed out…ultimately come down to housing and city planning.
The problem is, we somehow can’t figure out how to get diverse, fresh food, within a walkable/bikeable distance of everybody. So that leaves a few options:
It also doesn’t help that most American’s are overworked and can’t find half an hour to cook an actual meal, let alone sit down and enjoy it. We’re all burning the candle on both ends trying to make ends meet. And our food selections allow us to pick two out of “fast, cheap, healthy”.
We don’t have a surplus of any of those things…but the one that’s easiest to ignore (until it isn’t) is health. And so that’s the bank we draw our credit on.
Now add car-dependency on top, and we can find the time to at least go grocery shopping maybe once a week. We find the fresh produce is expensive (and probably also harboring parasites), and won’t last a whole week in the fridge…but we also kinda feel like maybe we should eat a vegetable every now and then, so we get some…but most of the groceries are gonna have to last that whole week, and will need to be fast and cheap…
It sucks, but hey, it’s the best country in the world (or so I was told through 12 years of forced education).