The cruel tale of the lack of movement

I've just come across one of my favorite topics in an interesting article from foodwatch. Theses stumbled. Immediately the mental knife in my pocket came to my mind and reminded me that I wanted to write something about it long ago. But it could be a bit longer. So then:

Actually, this article by foodwatch deals with the often only plausible social or environmental commitment of large corporations. There is e.g. a yoghurt sold more expensively, because the mug is made of corn starch and is thus produced more environmentally friendly and better recyclable. Unfortunately, the cup is not recycled at all and nobody knows which GM corn is in the cup or which pesticides were used in the cultivation. But the industry has just recognized that more and more consumers attach importance to sustainable and ecologically correct production and of which one would like to cut off a profitable slice here and there. Bad, but it gets worse:

In the penultimate section of the article, the bow is stretched a little further. The term "hypocritical marketing" refers to the Ferrero group, which is heavily involved in children's sports and exercise programs, but the recipes and marketing of its products remain unchanged and continue to feed tons of sugar to children:

"With prominent partners such as the German Football Association, the Group sponsors sports projects for children. Ferrero staged himself as a supporter of a healthy lifestyle. The confectionery manufacturer is partly responsible for the increasing obesity and diet-related diseases in children. But instead of ceasing to promote sweet-and-sour products like the cream-pie winner Milk-cuts as a sporty-light snack, Ferrero complains above all about the alleged lack of exercise in children - and thus withdraws from the responsibility. (...) The food industry likes to promote sports and exercise projects in order to give the impression that they are already sufficiently involved in overweight and nutrition-related illnesses. At the same time, it blocks really effective measures, such as traffic light labeling, with massive lobbying. However, that does not appear in any glossy booklet. "

However, this is where my favorite un-thesis surfaced again. A supposed truth that has been told to us until we have internalized it and, as a friend of industry, quite naturally believe in it:

THE REASON FOR THE GROWING OVERWEIGHT OF THE POPULATION IS A LACK OF MOVEMENT.

Now someone spontaneously wants to get up and exclaim "No, that's wrong!"? Or are we all nodding and thinking, "Yes, that's right, I know, I would have to move more." I suspect most of them would have nodded their heads. But how do we even come to think such a strange thing?

If the whole thing were not so fatal and unbelievably sad, one would actually have to give the food industry a medal for their effective work. Over the years she has sown this thesis in our collective consciousness with persistent PR campaigns and lobbying. It was able to germinate there by means of continuous communicative fertilization and has grown into a proud and strong plant that has not been able to cope with weed killers.

Even physicians and educationalists often propagate this thesis: Does your child like to eat? Then it has to move a lot. Make sure you have enough exercise. Otherwise it will be overweight.

Not that we misunderstand at this point.And after a week in the open-plan office, a brisk walk through the forest is like a wellness vacation for me. Exercise keeps the body supple and in the best case ensures that all muscle groups are occasionally stressed. It is natural and nice to move.

But moving the body has degenerated from a natural and necessary, sometimes joyful and sometimes tiring thing to an artificial compulsory program. We no longer nourish our body to move it, we move to eat. For 5 minutes of climbing stairs you can eat an apple. 10 minutes jogging is the calorie count of 1 slice of cheese (low-fat likely). A lot of women, and increasingly men, can recite a whole list of such conversion formulas by heart. Cohorts of men and women make a pilgrimage to the gym every night, giving themselves up within the exact prescribed cardio limits of burning fat. Did someone eat a bad currywurst with fries this afternoon? That means at least 60 minutes longer training on the stepper. This is how the bill looks for many. The food is a constant sin, the cause of a constantly bad conscience. So there is a vicious circle of sin, repentance and indulgence (gymnastics), which one would rather assume in this form rather in religious realms.

We often sit on ideas that are more in the land of myths and Legends belong. For example, we now know that today large parts of the population are overweight because they do not move enough. The people 200 years ago, on the other hand, have all moved much more and therefore these problems did not exist then. Now. Do we really believe that 200 years ago, people in their wooden clogs constantly ran like crazy over fields? Was it really the case that all of our ancestors did a physically demanding job that miraculously claimed all muscle groups equally within the optimal cardiozone?

On the contrary. Many of the domestic and craft tasks had to be done in hours of sitting and breastfeeding. And without a 6-way adjustable, ergonomically-assistive seating. Let us also briefly remember that it was almost impossible for women to go on the street without a corset and on foot. Female physical activity was scandalous and was rated as extremely capricious. Just the quiet riding was allowed as an exception. The working women of the lower classes certainly did not gather their skirts in their sparse free time and jogged for an hour through the city park. Nonetheless, not much of the population is suffering from diabetes.

It's not the movement that is the heart of the poodle, it's the food itself. The food was expensive compared to the rest of the cost of living, and often luxurious. Most of the products were only available seasonally and had a very limited shelf life or had to be preserved for a very long time. Animals grew slowly, had to be laboriously fed and nurtured and were only occasionally slaughtered. Meat and animal fat were therefore expensive. Luscious meals with carbs and fat were served only on weekends or holidays. The Lent was strictly observed and eaten on Friday even less lush. But above all, every dish had to be elaborately made by hand. We should keep in mind this mix of natural and economic scarcity as well as total control over the ingredients and products used when speculating about why the so-called civilization diseases did not exist back then.

Unfortunately, awareness remains today What we actually eat, often totally on the track.Unfortunately, the taste of the designed food does not help to disguise the camouflage directly. Because they taste yes - somehow. Often you can not say what exactly. But they serve a taste corridor, which in its supposed diversity ultimately remains surprisingly one-dimensional. Always kind of familiar and therefore good, often in seemingly new and exciting combinations. That this game goes so far that many people perceive the smell and taste of a natural food as too weak and classify the intensity and artificiality of strawberry flavor or in the laboratory produced ham smell as appealing, is well known. With that they are sitting in the convenience trap, which only allows you full flavor satisfaction when they consume such products or seasonings. So to speak, a taste conditioning on industrially fully produced goods, in which 0.3% of the ingredients may make up the name and taste of a product. The rest is made up of fat, sugar, auxiliaries and fillers.

But we've lost control of it. We usually happily consume what the industry regards as healthy, correct and contemporary. Because nothing can be wrong - that's our daily bread. Everyone is eating. It's not just about sweet calorie bombs, which are harmless presented as a sporty snack or vitamin-rich energy donors. These are powdered sauces that are used as a proof of love for returning children, finished products that ensure the happiness of the family or sweet bars that give you the well-deserved little break in an exhausting daily routine. Who can truly resist in the long term?

Any effort to provide consumers with a simple and clear view of the ingredients used in food has been thwarted by industry so far. The simple and effective traffic light system, for example, even referred to as misleading the consumer by the company - and smashed by intensive lobbying. Ladies and Gentlemen, given the prospect that 90% of their food packaging could soon be emblazoned with a red traffic light, the pests might well have run aground.

However, the industry continues to feed us Designed with efficiency and profit maximization in mind and full of empty calories, it does not stuff sugar and other carbohydrates into us, invents a beautiful disguising story, and shifts the responsibility for the consequences ice cold to everyone.

"You are overweight? Well, that's not the case with our fantastic and contemporary products. No, you are an undisciplined person who does not seem to be able to move sufficiently. That's her fault all alone. Look, what we have here for delicious advanced dishes. Even with little fat and sugar, we come to you specifically, they bunch of cravings. If you then feel insatiable cravings for sweets afterwards and you growl back after two hours, we have something on offer. A small light snack for example with digestive enzymes against your permanent constipation. By the way, that also comes from too little exercise. If you jog for 30 minutes every morning, you can eat as many of our instant soups as you want, and it will work out digestion.

Oh, and you over there. Have you already had enough love for your child today? Have you really comprehensively ensured that this small, growing body receives all the nutrients it needs?Or a little breakfast full of good things, in the morning half past nine in Germany ... "

Continue reading: Are you full?