Billions and Billions Served: So what's exactly in this serving?

Imagine your  typical drive to work in the morning, sun shining but probably not as bright as those golden arches.

The smell of autumn pervades the air but is masked by the comfort of the doughy scent seeping into your car from the nearest coffee shop. You pass a sign for a $0.99 breakfast sandwich and immediately think of the instant gratification brought on by the pleasant feeling of crispy bacon, buttery English muffins, and savory sausage settling in your stomach. Sounds a lot tastier and more filling than that $0.99 apple you briefly saw at the local farmer’s market. Yet that’s the way our society functions today.

It’s true, our busy schedules and our plummeting economy drive us to eat quickly and cheaply. Let’s face it, eating organic lean protein, vegetables, whole grains, and fruits drains our pockets. However, put into perspective, the extra money spent on eating healthy may ultimately save us a hefty sum on treatment for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and not  to mention may save our lives.

Colorado—a state boasting snowy mountain tops soaked in sun, twisting bike trails, and fresh crisp air draws the active fit population into its borders. However, about a month ago, Colorado joined the ranks of the other 49 states who have an obesity rate (yes, a BMI>30, not simply overweight) of over 20%, or one in five people. Sadly, the trend begins in childhood as a Children’s Hospital Boston study tracked over 44,500 newborns and showed that 11.6% were obese by the age of 5 and 16.1% were obese at age 10. If you’re more of a financial thinker than a health nut, know that annual healthcare costs associated with obesity is around $240 BILLION.

So what can we do to slow this epidemic, transform the lives of millions, and create a healthier nation? The first step is to get informed and inform others. With the election on the rise, presidential candidates need to recognize the seriousness of such issues and start publicizing the above statistics because few people realize how much they are harming their body through what they put in their mouth. The good news? Fixing the problem is all in our control. However, we’ve been saying to eat healthy and exercise for years and who has actually listened? I began listening when I found out my insurance company pays for the first $250 of my annual gym fee. How did I know this? I had to ask and that’s the problem. Such incentives need to be more frequent and better represented in the media. Employers have been promoting weight loss programs with cash incentives for quite some time but in order to be effective, they need to become a trend. We need to see tweets about incentives, status updates about the fun had in kickboxing, posts asking friends to go hiking. Trust me, even if your social media outreach did not convince others, it will at least continue to motivate you to continue to live healthy.

We've covered one aspect of the problem, individual determination, but what about general cost? Lower income neighborhoods have higher obesity rates and KFC is always going to be cheaper than wild-raised salmon. The government subsidizes corn yet the price of one avocado at my local grocery store is still $2.50. If politicians took action in curbing the price of eating healthy, perhaps we’d begin to dampen the ever-growing costs of healthcare while also making a difference in the way people feel, look, and perceive their self image from the inside out.




Additional Links/Referenced Material: 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207163807.htm
http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2011/11/the-myth-of-benign-baby-fat/

This is an official blog entry for the YourLocalSecurity.com Blogging Scholarship. If selected, I'll receive $1000 towards my college expenses in 2012. This scholarship is sponsored by YourLocalSecurity.com

Tingling Sensations

i do want to be soft.

i do want to be in

the cotton threads of tenderness.  i want

to feel the scratch of passion’s denim on my own

as if we were carefully welded

into each other’s embrace.

the troubles disappear with each blow

of blue and orange.

allow some room for error, the imperfections

are what i crave yet am too scared to have.

i’m sick of typing,

sick of pen and paper,

sick of drawing sticks and circle and artificial

happiness. i used to be able

to smell the brisk cold of the setting sun and taste

the dew of the perspiring grass the next morning.

sweat stains, tattered collars, remnants of my motivation.

i need more time to get love back.

i tell myself never cease, never drop

off that jagged cliff into nothingness. i want to bury

my hips far from the nothingness,

nuzzle my bangs into the arms of

infinity,

but i am stained with murky markers of my past

that are filled with spirits of those who have given up,

surrendered to the toils of the rocky precipice

of each morning’s awakening.  i want to wash

myself free from them.

but I’m stuck

in a tightly sealed baggy of muddy suffocation,

can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but

the mud that squeezes its way

inch by inch

between my toes and drags me down further.

do i continue to choke on bits of air.

i’ll surely suffocate on the browns and drown

in the blacks. the night falls

on me in a crash

of numbing sensations.  i sink

further down, bubbles from my gasping

breath float higher,

higher than i ever did.

i type

my desires into my imagination. tap.

tap.  too much space

                                    to fill in. i want to fix the gaps. turn imaginary into real.

be brave but steady

cower at nothing

befriend rum and whiskey and vulnerability

a wearer of smiles and laughter.

bid adieu to letters of self doubt,

fragments of self-hate, and second

guesses.

Long December

My days of innocence entangle me in my past

life where sundials were unseen and grandfather clocks

unheard among the sounds of streams flowing freely in the rocks.

A stranger to my own skin, time is anything but fast

as I meticulously track every second.  “You will not last

forever,” he says.  Remind me what forever is in ticks and tocks.

Home is now just a house where I sleep interrupted by the knocks

 of an inevitable dark intruder, stripping away my worth with its cast

of shivery chills.  Winters day, snow falling

gently on the roof when I first hear the news. 

Alive in my body yet my soul stands still as I ask

why it came without any calling.

When will the minutes stop?  Unfamiliar hues

engulf me.  Inevitable, dark, mortality my mask.

Publish

Abstract is

not concerning concrete objects but expressing something that can only be appreciated

intellectually.

Abstract is

that short little blurb in the beginning of a research paper,

you know the only thing I really need to read

to get a general idea of the purpose and conclusions of the experiment.  The rest

is just fluff.  Why waste time with procedure

when I can skip to results?

Love, beauty, happiness

are not abstract to me. 

What still lives

inside of me are memories of her.  Swirls of

rosy pinks and dreamy lavenders,

the colors of the ribbons that foolishly

tried to tame her free-willed auburn ringlets.  Beauty is

those springy curls pirouetting in the wind.  Beauty is

dancing with the gold and orange specks

that sway playfully up and down the streets

on that warm autumn’s day. 

Hair and leaves seem pretty tangible to me.

Procedure.

Congratulate mom on her enlarged stomach.

Get mom whatever she wants whenever she wants it.

Don’t ask questions.

Spend some extra time with dad to show him some normalcy.

Get in the car and drive.

Reverse.  Drive back to grab the video camera.

Hold your baby sister.

Watch her grow.

Watch her play.

Watch her go away.

Watch her lay.

Our silence

was once filled with giggles escaping between the gaps

of newly formed teeth and

was once filled with chuckles from

the newly developed gut of a proud father.  Love is

the sound of doors slamming, anger bubbling, and feet

stomping

followed by a creak of wood and a beam of light

as my father opens the door to check on her.  Love is

the heavy slow breathing muffled by the wool blanket

as my father stands beside her and watches her sleep.  Love is

the same silhouette of my father standing above her at the wake,

the same look in his eyes, checking to make sure she will be alright.

And she will be.

The birth is the introduction and the death is the conclusion.

Happiness is the procedure of it all.  Happiness is

those specific detailed moments that never escape the forever growing gaps

of memory.  Happiness is watching your sister fight harder

than she ever has for one more day of life.  Happiness is knowing

she is going to be alright.  Happiness is smelling those dewy leaves

of red and yellow and remembering her.

Happiness is the procedure.  You can’t get it from the abstract.