MIni-Post: Master & Commander

Two blog posts in two days.  Well, why not.  The other night the movie "Master and Commander" was on, and being a big fan of British naval warfare (past life thing maybe?)  I watched it again.  If you have not seen this movie you should really check it out.  Russell Crowe, back when he was still cool, plays Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, of the HMS Surprise, and the rest of the cast is stellar too.  It's an action movie but the real heart of the film is based on the relationships between the characters, which gives it a resonance and depth that's rare in an action movie.  (It's also rare to have a thrilling action movie where the vehicles involved never go faster than about 30 miles an hour, but still, it's pretty thrilling.) 

Anyway, I'm watching this movie and there's this big scene where they're in a storm and one of the horizontal thingies that stick out from the masts has broken (for a fan of British naval warfare, I'm not that good at actual terminology) and they're trying like hell to either fix it or throw it overboard because it's acting like a storm anchor and the boat's being pulled down. People are scrambling up the rigging and down the rigging and chopping at the rigging with axes and it suddenly occurs to me:  Are there lots of fat people out there because none of us have jobs like that anymore?

I mean, seriously.  The sailors in this movie are climbing up the rigging to like 3 or 4 stories above the deck to do their jobs and then they're climbing back down.  They're working the pumps and turning the wheel and doing all these very physical boat jobs.  I don't know what they're eating, but whatever it is couldn't have been good; they didn't have the food preservation tactics back in1805 that they do now.  So they're not getting anywhere near the calories that we do now and they're doing these hard physical jobs and no surprise, most of them are rail-thin.  

We in the US have managed to create the most efficient calorie delivery system that has ever existed since the history of the world, probably.  Even poor people can get more than sufficient calories because we have things like Little Debbie cakes and other cheap junk food.  (Note, sufficient calories doesn't mean sufficient nutrition; the two are very different, and eating nutritious food is expensive.  I'll get to why another time.)  So while a lot of people still suffer from food insecurity (something else I'll have to get to another time), for the most part, most people get plenty to eat.  And then look at what most of us do for a living.  We go to offices and sit at desks.  Oh, there are lots of exceptions but that's what most of the US work force is doing.  I personally have to remind myself to get up and stretch once an hour or so or else I get stiff.  So we have the most efficient calorie delivery system and the most sedentary workplaces.  This is a recipe for more fat people.

But people can exercise! you say.  Well, yes, some people can, but taking the time to go out for a three-mile run is not likely to happen when you're working two jobs to put calories on the table and raising three kids besides.  And even if you do have the time, it might not be safe to go out in your neighborhood.  Gym memberships cost money.  (And try canceling one, if you don't believe me.)  B y and large you need a car to get to a gym, too, and poor people are less likely to have cars.  More and more, exercise is becoming the domain of people with enough money and time to do it.  Poor people aren't lazy; look at the workloads they're carrying.  They just don't have the money and the time to exercise.

Lots of people have been freaking out about the "obesity epidemic" (I hate that word, by the way; just say fat already) and especially how it's affecting kids.  Well, kids are raised by parents, and if those parents are working the two jobs and raising the three kids and don't have time or a place to exercise and don't have the money to buy nutritious food and count on things like McDonald's and Little Debbie snack cakes to keep their kids' bellies full, the kids aren't likely to be able to exercise or eat nutritious food either unless they're getting it at school -- and guess what part of school budgets keeps getting cut?   In Europe, people have desk jobs as much as they do in the States, but they at least do a lot more walking, and they take trains places instead of cars, which means fewer opportunities to get fast food. There are also studies that show that European folks don't go out to restaurants nearly as often as Americans do, though that's changing.  

Everything I've seen about the "obesity epidemic" has been saying, how are we going to get people to change their habits?  I saw this movie and what I'm thinking is, who's going to come in here and change our whole culture? Because that's what's needed.  QED.  Cheers!