History and Humanity Lenses
Analyzing obesity using history lens
The present global scourge of obesity, recognized as a public health disaster, is hardly a few decades old. Since the beginning of history, persistent malnutrition and food shortage have been the affliction of humankind until in the 18th century where technological advances gradually increased food supplies. Initially, these advancements in health care and variety, amount and quality of food was an increase in body size and survival. After WW2, the incremental effect of technological developments has been an oversupply of readily available food and minimal physical exercises (Greenlee, Molmenti, Rundle, & Tsai, 2016).
Low food supplies in most of humankind history made people believe that being fat was good and desirable as portrayed in medical opinion and literature of those times. It is during the second half of the 19th century that people began to stigmatize being fat for esthetic reasons. In the 20th century, people realized the associations of mortality rates to being fat. Early reports indicated obesity as a risk factor for deaths due to chronic nephritis and further reports linked the wellness issue to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney disease (Curhan, Ascherio.., & Stampfer, 1996). An increasing body size acquired in the past decade is now an indication of the direct link of obesity with severe kidney disease and its symptoms.
Today, obesity is a global public health issue and is associated with around 110 000 unnecessary deaths each year. Obese grownups have high risks of acquiring difficult death situations such as diabetes, stroke, high cholesterol, coronary heart disease. They are also at risk of colon, breast and prostate cancers. Overweight teenagers are at high risk of suffering from hypertension, imbalanced levels of fatty acids. Moreover, overweight teenagers grow into obese adults. Overweight teenagers and adults suffer from psychological difficulties and social discrimination.
Analyzing obesity using humanity lens
Food scarcity in most of humankind history and following implications that it was a good thing to be fat and desirable to have an increased flesh can be reflected in the politics, arts and literature of those times. The obvious obesity of the mother goddess lasted from the Ice Age to the Pleistocene Age. After this period, there is evidence that shows that the mother goddess did not continue any more. For instance, evidence obtained from Spartans’ records shows that fat men were excluded from the society; Hippocratic Corpus accredits tiredness to overweight and Socrates stories which says that he exercised every morning to maintain his figure insensible bounds (Chooi, Ding, & Magkos, 2019).
The perfect pudginess and fleshiness of the female figure lasted well into the earlier years of the 20th century. The praising culture implication of obesity is seen in the fat, stout past president figures of the United States, such as Taylor and Hoover, in a period when fatness was a symbol of strength, health and prosperity. These figures are different from those of the president of the latter half of the 20th century like Nixon and Reagan, who is slender and appeared mostly in TVs like President Nixon during the national debates. The presidents also appeared in magazines, videos, and social media platforms, especially President Nixon, after his resignation.
The changes in public opinion of fatness and medical consequences of obesity were seen in Bill Clinton, who slimmed from a fat fleshy president to a slender president after he suffered the adverse effects of past eating habits. During this period, excessive eating led to obesity which was linked to health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes. He later became an advocate for dietary control of obesity (American Diabetes Association. 2019). In my personal life, I relate with these representations and learn the side effects of obesity and how to prevent obesity through dietary control. These sources encourage us to embrace dietary control by eating healthy food which is cholesterol-free to avoid obesity and other related health problems.
References
American Diabetes Association. (2019). 8. Obesity management for the treatment of type 2 diabetes: Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes—2019. Diabetes care, 42(Supplement 1), S81-S89.
Chooi, Y. C., Ding, C., & Magkos, F. (2019). The epidemiology of obesity. Metabolism, 92, 6-10.
Curhan, G. C., Willett, W. C., Rimm, E. B., Spiegelman, D., Ascherio, A. L., & Stampfer, M. J. (1996). Birth weight and adult hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and obesity in US men. Circulation, 94(12), 3246-3250.
Greenlee, H., Shi, Z., Molmenti, C. L. S., Rundle, A., & Tsai, W. Y. (2016). Trends in obesity prevalence in adults with a history of cancer: results from the US National Health Interview Survey, 1997 to 2014. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 34(26), 3133.