Wellbeing
This weekend I attended "The Obesity Society"s annual meeting, this year held in San Diego at the Convention Center. There were hundreds of lectures, oral presentations, and poster presentations from researchers around the world studying an aspect of obesity. There are so many fields within obesity research I didn't even realize! Childhood obesity, determinants of obesity (in utero through old age), genetics of obesity, mouse and rat based studies, family- community- and school-based interventions for diet and physical activity, weight loss studies, pharmaceutical and surgical studies, studies on biological differences between ethnicities, etc, etc. A wonderful conference with so much to learn about!
BUT, here's the other side of what I saw:
1) I was shocked when I sat down to our complimentary lunch and the beverage options were.........soda. Period. The closest source of water was a free-standing cooler on the opposite side of the Convention Center (about a 5 minute walk).
2) There was a large section of vendors at the conference, comprised of companies who paid to have a booth to market their product or service. Every food-based booth had sample products with ingredient lists that went on for days and may as well have been in Swahili. There was no fruit, vegetable, or whole grain or organic vendor in sight.
3) I took samples of all of the weight loss foods and just googled their prices online. Given what these products have to offer you for your health and weight loss goals, they are not worth a quarter of what they cost.
What does this tell me?
These 3 observations perfectly highlight one of the principle challenges in public health, popularly called the "Trilemma." This refers to the chronic trade-offs we face between (1) Access, (2) Quality and (3) Affordability.
We can put hundreds of millions of dollars and the brightest minds into learning the science behind obesity, and we can pat each other on the backs for the successes of our academic inquiries, but are we often still missing the big picture? Are we providing people with the access, quality and affordability that are vital to losing weight and staying healthy?
If you are willing to share, I'd love to hear about the personal barriers you or those you know face when it comes to living healthy or losing weight. With the guidance of research, we can work together to truly identify what needs to be changed and how.
Cheers,
Laura
P.S. There's still hope:
Despite the high fructose corn syrup industry's steady presence as a vendor in past years, they were not allowed to purchase a booth this year. The Obesity Society has since lost a major funding source.
BUT, here's the other side of what I saw:
1) I was shocked when I sat down to our complimentary lunch and the beverage options were.........soda. Period. The closest source of water was a free-standing cooler on the opposite side of the Convention Center (about a 5 minute walk).
2) There was a large section of vendors at the conference, comprised of companies who paid to have a booth to market their product or service. Every food-based booth had sample products with ingredient lists that went on for days and may as well have been in Swahili. There was no fruit, vegetable, or whole grain or organic vendor in sight.
3) I took samples of all of the weight loss foods and just googled their prices online. Given what these products have to offer you for your health and weight loss goals, they are not worth a quarter of what they cost.
What does this tell me?
These 3 observations perfectly highlight one of the principle challenges in public health, popularly called the "Trilemma." This refers to the chronic trade-offs we face between (1) Access, (2) Quality and (3) Affordability.
We can put hundreds of millions of dollars and the brightest minds into learning the science behind obesity, and we can pat each other on the backs for the successes of our academic inquiries, but are we often still missing the big picture? Are we providing people with the access, quality and affordability that are vital to losing weight and staying healthy?
If you are willing to share, I'd love to hear about the personal barriers you or those you know face when it comes to living healthy or losing weight. With the guidance of research, we can work together to truly identify what needs to be changed and how.
Cheers,
Laura
P.S. There's still hope:
Despite the high fructose corn syrup industry's steady presence as a vendor in past years, they were not allowed to purchase a booth this year. The Obesity Society has since lost a major funding source.