Weight Of The Nation
Year: 2012
Grade: B+
Country: USA
Director: Chaykin
Reviewgood hbo documentary about the obesity epidemic in the country. looks at it scientifically and biologically as well as sociologically and politically. from a public health standpoint, obesity is easily the number one problem in the country. it feeds (no pun intended) the notion that we are a nation of lazy people. to me, though, it’s more interesting to view america as a nation of contradictions. we’re amazingly obese yet we have this incredible pressure to look thin. do we have one because of the other? are we obsessed with being thin because it’s increasingly rare? or is it because of a new agey phenomenon called pushing? the idea there is that the more you push against something the more you attract it. so, ponder how the war against drugs has gone or the war on poverty. if you think about the problems too much, you make them worse; so goes the theory.
anyway, it’s a good film that addresses the issue in a straightforward manner. the frustrating thing is that it’s a pretty simple fix on the face of it. educate people that they need to work out more and eat less and better. if you have enough willpower you can avoid the problem altogether. the problem is that people don’t have that much willpower and you really do need it these days in order to overcome the obstacles toward healthy living. obstacles like: poorly planned cities which require cars instead of bikes/walking, poor health education, scientifically manufactured foodstuffs designed to keep you eating, subsidies of cheap calories, evolution telling us to consume as much as possible while progress has made calories extremely easy to acquire, etc. the documentary doesn’t get too much into that stuff, unfortunately.