Wellness revolves around how good you feel. Obviously, exercise plays a key role in having this great feeling, and so does eating the right stuff. Often, the lack of exercise and proper nutrition transform wellness into sickness.
Most of us know about (or have at least heard) of the CICO dictum (Calories In, Calories Out ), yet how many people really walk the talk? To illustrate, you may feel immediately nauseous upon consuming a known toxic substance, but the impact of eating a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts daily may take days or even weeks to show up! And when it does, its but human nature to blame it on something else!
This explains why the fattening of America took several generations, although experts only discovered it to be an epidemic in the last few years. For decades, though, the United Nations has been sounding the alarm bell for the growing underbelly of developed, and then the developing nations. Through its health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), the world body has been equally concerned about the burgeoning malnutrition in underdeveloped countries. In a January 2005 report, WHO emphasized that "one billion peopleone sixth of the world’s population - live in extreme poverty, lacking the safe water, proper nutrition, basic health care and social services needed to survive. Almost 11 million children die each year, six million of them under five from preventable diseases."
In January 18, 2005, WHO highlighted health in its year 2015 development blueprint (aka the Millennium Project). It likewise underscored the need for the world to "immediately and massively increase the investment in health programs."
As if talking to America, the recent WHO report admonished that proven solutions are likely to turn the tide towards achieving health goals. It also added: “We have the means to achieve those goals. We have the technology. What we need are the resources and the political will. We cannot wait any longer to do what we have promised to achieve in the coming decade."
It is interesting to note that such admonition of the world body rings a bell in the solutions recommended by both the American Institute of Food Technologists and the American Institute of Medicine towards combating the obesity epidemic in North America. Both organizations chorus on the need for the government to intervene and look or change its infrastructure policies towards food distribution and production. One quick way that the U.S. can get moving along these lines is to balance its subsidies towards farm products in a way that vegetables, fruits, and whole wheat production are given their due importance in the food chain.
This will have the powerful impact of making these staples more affordable for the working masses. The government can also mandate schools to bring back Physical Education in the curriculum, ensure that bike routes and parks are properly integrated into housing plans, and that national advertising focus on healthy eating instead of fad snacking.
Today, over 20 percent of Americans are both malnourished and obese. Food insecurity, meaning lack of regular access to healthy foodsis a large contributor to malnutrition in poor communities, affecting some 33 million Americans nationwide. Looking at these statistics, it is obvious that wellness for at least 33 million Americans remain a dream. We already know that proper nutrition and adequate exercise are key to being or feeling well. This illustrates in a rather dramatic way that knowing does not necessarily mean doing. For despite the Abs and the Carbs images portrayed ever so repetitively on American television sets during sitcoms and soap operas, so many people are unwell. Or is there a truly stubborn virus involved, immune even to the Baywatch culture?
Carl Densiel is the owner of Wellness
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