by Wayne Leon Learmond

Created on: October 21, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

With the ever-changing face of today's society we live in, with its fast-paced culture and the easy availability of fast foods and junk foods, suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic. It has crept up on us going unchecked, almost invisible and unnoticed among the general population. Men women and children, indeed whole families, have been struck down by this new pandemic of the 21st Century. It is a disease that has - up to now - been allowed free reign to run rampage, destroying the lives of thousands upon thousands of people left in its wake. This latter-day disease is called....OBESITY

Almost everything in our society these days can be linked directly back to obesity, indeed they go hand in hand with one another: Boredom, a marked decrease in exercise, stress, the use of cars, which has made a lot of us very lazy, and also the increase in computer and games technology. Hand in hand with those mentioned we begin to snack, we might not be particularly hungry, but it is always good to be able to treat ourselves once, twice or three times...isn't it?

And so with snacking in front of the PC, TV or at the office we suddenly find ourselves becoming less and less healthy. We find that the walk we did yesterday, is not so easy to do today. We find ourselves short of breath, as we notice a little build-up here and there of "fat pockets". We begin to feel "heavy" and also in most cases, we become short-tempered (this could actually be contributed to the additives that is put in many foods these days). And with the almost chronic-like spread of the giant supermarkets and hypermarkets, throughout our cities who have deals such as "Buy two for the price of one", temptation is always close at hand. Why bother buying fruit and vegetables, (that are high in price anyway) when, for much less money, a person could buy unhealthy bulk food for much less the price?

We buy in bulk the food that makes us unhealthy and spreads the disease of obesity, (which is illogical) completely ignoring the foods on our shelves that WILL make us healthy. The connection of the price of food, as I have already mentioned, cannot be underestimated here. Governments and councils can bring out every initiative going to try and help the obese and chronically obese by offering free gym classes and such like, but if the food companies themselves are not willing to help by bringing down the prices of fruit and vegetables to a reasonable level, then whatever initiative is brought out will

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