Unfortunately in our time, being overweight is a problem that the majority of North Americans face. Has it become a problem simply because unhealthy food is simply more readily available than healthy food? I think there is more to it than that.
Unhealthy food is often far easier to access, as most fast-food chains have drive through's and delivery available, also maximising our collective laziness. The fact of the matter is that we can hardly blame the fast-food chains and piddly little pizza shops for making their fattening feasts so readily available to us as really commercialism and capitalism are simply doing their jobs. You cannot blame the forest for the fire, so to speak. In a world where laziness runs rampant, and people can simply push a few buttons and have a heart-attack literally delivered right to their door, who is there to blame? Certainly the schools should be offering more healthy alternatives and educating their students as to a more healthy lifestyle? Certainly the government should be limiting the exposure to the advertising of above-stated establishments? Certainly we are not the ones to blame for our inevitable obsession with obesity?
The human condition has led us to believe that absolutely nothing is our faults. That children suffer from A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. or perhaps they simply have some undiscovered social flaw that can only be treated with drugs and not proper parenting. We have learned that it's perfectly fine to blame everybody else for problems that are essentially only caused by us. This food is only unhealthy if the person choosing to eat it is not nearly active enough to burn off the extra calories. This is not to say that calorie counting is the correct choice, in fact quite the opposite. It proves to be a pain in the ass for both the person counting the calories and the person serving said calorie-counter. You cannot expect someone who is paid minimum-wage in a fast-food facility to know the amount of calories in each item off the top of their head, and to expect that is selfish and narrow-minded.
On a slightly different note, the perception of a woman being bony and malnourished as attractive is yet another plague on society. These women could not dream to carry a child, nor even themselves, in a healthy way. Too many women can't understand why they don't look like these small-breasted models when they seem to forget that a real woman looks more like Marilyn Monroe than like Paris Hilton. Bony collars and jutting ribs are far from attractive, in the grand scheme of things. Anthropologically, men are not looking for the current picture of beauty, but more for a woman who looks like she would be able to pass a child with relative ease. Keep in mind that over the centuries the ideal of what a woman should look like has changed so dramatically; from a husky, larger woman, to the current stick thin model, that it can hardly be expected of today's youth to understand what exactly is expected of them, beauty wise.
To clarify, we should be looking for a healthy medium instead of adhering to what the media throws at us. It is on us to exercise and understand that we are not actually expected to be the pinnacle of beauty as today's world sees it, because it is an unreal expectation. We are beautiful as we are. The body type we have been blessed with, and the minds we have been given. The only thing that is expected of us is to be healthy enough to perpetuate our existence.
