Cause and effect

For the most part here in America, we have the same diet we did 100 years ago. We consume the same amount of calories, carbohydrates, protein, etc. The main difference between now and then is 100 years ago you did not just hop in your car and run to the Mc Donald’s drive-through. As a matter of fact getting anywhere required a lot of work 100 years ago. Feeding and brushing your horse before you saddle it, then hooking it up the wagon. And before you even leave for the day you had to milk the cows and collect eggs from the chickens. I will not go into much more detail but what I am trying to explain is that the trivial things we do daily would have burned hundreds or thousands of calories daily back then yet, our diet and appetite are basically the same.

We consume large amounts of white flour. It is in everything from bread and crackers to pasta and cereal. It converts to energy immediately in the body and if not used it gets stored on as fat. This worked out 100 years ago but now after we eat our eggs and toast for breakfast, there are no cows to milk (for most of us) no horses to saddle up and we do not need to go out and collect the eggs to begin with. After we eat our eggs and toast, most of us take less than fifty steps to our car where we just sit there until we get to work. After we are at work, the majority of us either sit all day or stand in one place all day; yet we consume the same amount of calories we did back then. Do you think there was any need to exercise back then? Not when your regular daily duties included chopping wood for hours or bailing hay with your bare hands for most of the day.

The few Americans that are in shape today are those who exercise to make up for the excess of calories. Is it a sacrifice to take a little time out of the day to actually get some exercise? I do not think so, especially when we get done with a long hard day of sitting we come home to sit some more while we watch TV.

The cause of eating way too many calories leads to the effect of being over-weight. Being overweight leads to vary health problems. The cause of having health problems leads to the effect of a shorter life. Does this make sense to anyone?

Featured Image: profiles by chris
Source by Brendan Grubbs