One young man is documenting his struggles with obesity through a series of youtube videos entitled "Losing It."This on-line video journal provides strong support to the implication that there may be a correlation between video game popularity and obesity. Themes "Mr. Losing It" expresses in the video journals are of overcoming stress, difficulty maintaining a healthy diet, and of a severe addiction to video games. One of his videos made me laugh, so I thought I’d share it with you all. These addictive lifestyle attributes are on the rise in America.
The Sahel region in Africa is experiencing a crisis of malnutrition of a completely different type. With an average of eight children per family and food/economic stability a concern, there is a struggle to provide enough food & nutrients for child survival.
These two stories illustrate the vast discrepancies in malnutrition experienced in the world today. I don't seriously mean it when I say this, but an interesting obesity intervention would be to provide obese Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 (like Mr. Losing It) the opportunity to visit regions such as the Sahel for a week... How I'd love to see the youtube video journals in response to such a trip :-)
4 comments:
Its interesting to see such a vast difference topic but at the same time similar issue people are dealing with. They are both nutrition related but each go toward opposite direction. There should be a mid point for the world to blanace this challenge out...Any thought David?
Hi Liyan,
Thanks for the comment. Both are indeed extreme cases of malnutrition. I was trying to illustrate how ridiculous the tremendous disparity is between chronic obesity in the world's richest countries on the one hand, and chronic undernourishment in the world's poorest countries, on the other.
I guess I was thinking what an interesting scene it would be if individuals from both extremes met and interacted with one another. Would there be a drastic change in perspective on the part of one or both extreme cases? Would the obese individual change his or her lifestyle choices?
To answer your question, I agree that we should strive to attain an appropriate epidemiological balance between the two extremes...
Accomplishing this is quite an undertaking, however...
What do you think?
David
lol, just for the sheer entertainment of it i would love to have the perspective of a starving african so that i could understand how they'd react to the sight of a 450 lb man. it sickens me how unaccountable people can be to their personal well being. a trip to food desolate regions could just be the humbling experience an obese person may need to change their lifestyle.
There are so many reality television shows where participants loose weight in a contest type format. It is supposed to encourage viewers to watch people loose weight in a role model fashion. It's unique the way that we have an overweight problem, but I like this approach to addressing it from an entertainment education stance.
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