The devil made me eat it

“Call it the McVictim syndrome,” wrote David Gratzer in a Los Angeles Times editorial last week. “Too many pundits, public health experts and politicians are working overtime to find scapegoats for America’s obesity epidemic.”

Between blaming food manufacturers to urban sprawl to the pollutants in the air, Americans are willing to point the finger at anyone but themselves. Says Gratzer: “How long before we’re told that the devil made us eat it?”

He continues: “The McVictim syndrome spins a convenient—and unhealthy—narrative on America’s emerging preventable disease crisis. McVictimization teaches Americans to think that obesity is someone else’s fault—and therefore, someone else’s problem to solve.”

The truth is, as Gratzer candidly puts it, in most cases, obesity is entirely preventable. He writes,

The McVictim syndrome is far too prevalent, which promotes the notion that regulations and laws are the primary solution to the problem. But governments can’t micromanage your waistline for you. Even if governments could magically walk you to work, ban food advertising, regulate sugar out of food and suck those fat particles out of the air, in a free society you would still have the power to drive to the nearest restaurant, shake your salt shaker and order a second piece of pie.

The simple reason obesity rates in America have doubled over the last half century is because of a huge surge in our calorie intake. Overeating is the primary cause of the epidemic and its corresponding list of obesity-related illnesses, which now devours almost 10 percent of all U.S. health care spending.

Gratzer also believes the epidemic poses a threat to our national security. In 2009, for example, 48,000 military recruits flunked their basic physical exams because of excessive weight.

“The only proven way to reduce weight problems for good, and in the process improve our health, is to recognize that there is something wrong with our diets and lifestyles and to make healthful changes,” the Trumpetwrote in 2002. Simply finding new ways to lose weight won’t solve the obesity problem—it is merely one of many effects of an unhealthy lifestyle.

Read our articles “America’s War With Obesity” and “The Clean Life” for more information on how to combat this epidemic.