Fat Land Greg Cristler Analysis

Fat Land
Greg Cristler is a journalist who had been considered overweight for much of his life before he decided to make a lifestyle change and ended up losing forty pounds. Over this period of time Cristler reflected on his life and the various things that contributed to him being overweight. These factors included the fact that the social, and economic class that he was in at the time were prime contributors to the population of the overweight in the country today. In order to drop this weight Cristler began to go around the city and take jogs in the park, he had a doctor that prescribed him the weight loss drug Meridia, he and his wife began to cook healthy food, and he had access to tons of information. In “Fat Land”, Cristler says that
Globalization in the 70s played a huge role in making things tough on Americans. In an effort to create a cheaper more abundant food supply America looked to the Japanese who had figured out how to produce a new sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, which was less expensive and had a longer shelf life that sugar. Food manufacturers also began to replace sugar with Palm oil which is a stable yet highly saturated, commercial fat, which in turn led to an increase in the production of inexpensive, and energy packed snack foods. This combined with the fact that portion sizes were getting larger seemed to be the perfect storm for consumers to be able to eat on the go or buy cheaper foods that were much more easy to store and handle that meals that families had to slave in the kitchen over a hot stove for. Cristler describes the fact that economically it only made sense for companies to keep producing these goods, I mean why not? The companies were turning over huge margins of profit and the consumers couldn’t leave these delicious items on the shelves. Why would Americans, who are driven by capitalism spend more time cooking at home, when they could easily stop by a fast food restaurant and pick up a cheap fast meal to eat? It was at this time when I came to realize that in today’s society a lot of the reasoning for this problem that we are facing in this country would be because of
Since the schools funds had been cut they did what anyone else would rationally do in their situation which is find ways to cope with the circumstances and still be able to provide for their students, schools answer to this dilemma was to go out and purchase meals that were cheap, did not require lots of time to prepare, and were dense in calories. The result of this is that the balanced diet in schools began to disappear, schools had begun to serve things like pizza, burgers, French fries, and various other foods that are not particularly healthy. Cristler talks about how schools downplayed the importance of physical education which contributed to obesity rates with the most direct effect being on young children. America had reached the post-industrial era in which PE was put on the back burner in order to focus on the fact that we as a country had fallen behind Japan in both productivity, and job creation. In a sense fitness was more focused on individuality and people who were financially able could go and join clubs, or other activities that were membership based. This reminded me that at the end of the day America is to the point of the golden rule which is the fact that, “He who has the gold rules”, big companies that have financial power shape the way for the American