…No Free Time…Fast Food…Extra Pounds

It seems like the Fall semester of 2006 at MU is consuming my life.  With work and school there never seems to be any time to do anything.  I like staying on the edge a bit, but here lately things have been really crazy. 

Last semester and over the summer I had pretty much the same workload at work, full time in IT seems to be a minimum of 60 hours, and I could still juggle classes and maintain a 3.81 GPA.  This semester on the other hand MU has really picked up the pace.  My classes assign so much homework there is hardly time for much of a life when I get home. 

I am not really a procrastinator, but last week I had a huge disaster at work that consumed nearly all of my time from Thursday 7:20AM through Sunday 10:00PM.  In that time span I had a test and an essay due in my Internet classes.  I didn’t get home until 8:00PM and I had till midnight to finish it.  It was crazy to study, more like cram for the test, crash the essay, which was finished and turned in at 11:59PM.  My grades were not perfect but it was better to attempt than not too.

To sum this up, it seems like everyone is so busy these days, and well obesity is supposed to be such a problem in the US, who has time to prepare a decent healthy meal?  I don’t have any kids just two dogs and I couldn’t imagine cooking for them after a long day.

Before obesity  became a problem in the US, our lifestyles used to be much different.  In the baby-booming days in the 50’s most mom’s didn’t work, they took care of all of the children, cooked, and cleaned all day.  So most of our parents, depending on our age, had real food, with most likely, less preservatives and growth hormones than we get now. 

To see how this obeisidy thing came about, you could look at how the American family has changed in the last half of the century.  In the “Communist Manifest” the one thing Marx and Ingles pegged correctly is that a capitalistic home, will be revolve around money.  After the 50’s and 60’s families needed more money to function, divorce was more common, and for one reason or another both parents had to work.  A family having both parents working full-time jobs will be pressed for time.  With both parents working, then along comes the microwave, ahh such simplicity. 

Enter the MicroWave into our lives, now parents had an easy way to prepare breakfast, lunch, or dinner for their kids.  The wonderful microwave meal so hot you can’t touch it on the outside and cold as ice in the center.  Microwave meals are usually not the healthiest of meals.  Moving along to fast-food.

Fast food is really unhealthy, well anyone who saw the documentary “Super Size Me” would know that.  I still find myself driving to a drive thru to get a greasy burger more times a week than I should.  Running short on time, it is convenient for me to grab something quick than not at all.  The last time I missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner I wrecked my vehicle into a parking meter.  So instead of getting dizzy now I will go and eat something.

Now back on track, think about how much easier it is for a parent to order a pizza for dinner, throw a 5 min. meal in the microwave, or stop at a fast-food drive thru.

Another way to determine why US citizens are getting so big would be to do a little study on fast food portion size over the past years.  Another way would be to compare the rise of fast food sales over the past years with respect to population increase.  So what is so hard for everyone to see how and why we have gotten so fat?  Maybe in college they should have a nutrition class.