Is modern life making us fat?

June 7, 11:32 AMNutrition ExaminerCarol Bardelli

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We are a nation suffering from obesity due to convenience.

 Simply, the answer is yes. Modern conveniences contribute to overweight and obesity. You've heard it before, our modern lifestyle with all its gadgets and time savers like electric toothbrushes and can openers, washers and dryers, remote controls, drive-thru banks, dry cleaners, fast food chains, and in Las Vegas drive-thru wedding chapels, contribute to our weight problems. We move considerably less than our parents and grandparents did.

Here's an eye opening example. A modern housewife performs mundane chores regularly, one being her daily chore of making homemade dinners to keep her family healthy. She avoids fast foods and prepackaged processed foods. Instead of 3 - 28 ounce cans of store bought tomato puree, she decides to prepare about 4 dozen garden fresh tomatoes for the pot. Sounds simple? Think again!

Opening three cans with an electric can opener and pouring contents into a stock pot takes all of three minutes. Washing, peeling and chopping by hand four dozen tomatoes takes almost an hour! And that's before adding the rest of the ingredients to the pot.

Prepping is only half the battle. Mrs. Keep It Healthy had a counter and sink covered in tomato juice, seeds, skin and end pieces. She has to scrub down half the kitchen, as a few renegade (killer?) tomatoes sprayed the coffee pot and other appliances. Sheesh, her modern kitchen looked like a food fight scene from Animal House.

Our grandmothers, and some of our mothers, who relied on a vegetable garden and farm animals for the majority of their food. They put way more time and energy than we do into just getting food to the table. Gardening, harvesting, canning, raising animals, gathering eggs, milking, churning butter, butchering, smoking, hand prepping food, stoking the wood stove, getting water from the well. Just cooking (with no microwaves, food processors or prepackaged foods) could take the better part of the day.

No wonder generations past were slender! No wonder our spoiled generation and now our children's generation are getting fat. Not only do we have access to cheap, ready to eat foods, we don't have to do anything before we shove it in our mouths. Stand in line (or sit in your car,) order off a diverse menu, hand over a few bucks and wait 2 minutes. You're handed your prepped and cooked dose of dubious quality high calorie meal.

Even at home all you have to do is pull a frozen dinner out of the freezer, shove it in the microwave and wait five minutes. You don't even have to make the effort to plate your food, just eat right out of the indestructible container. Use a disposable fork and voila! No dishes.

No wonder why we're a fat nation. We don't move enough in our daily lives.

What causes weight gain and obesity?