AgriThoughts

It’s Our Own Fault- Don’t Blame The Farmers

If there is one thing that I’ve noticed, it’s that when the media gets a hold of something they turn whatever the topic is into World War Three (and by my calculations, we’ve had a lot of them). 

What seems to be floating around the modern news in regards to agriculture is how what modern farmers are producing is the leading cause of why people in the United States are obese. Does anyone else find that claim to be a little one sided? It’s my fault that the people in this country are fat? I think not.

When I was younger, every night of the week my family would sit around the kitchen table and eat a normal meal that consisted of a meat (pork chops, pork loin, chicken breast or various cheap steak cuts), a vegetable and usually a starch (corn or potatoes). I was not allowed to be in the house from 9am to 6pm on weekends in the summer, I was allowed one hour of TV a day (unless the family was watching something together), and there were no video games in the house. At all. My mom and dad worked 40+ hours a week and we still managed to eat a healthy dinner (and I was not allowed to even dream of leaving the table before my  vegetable was gone).

Now the modern family sits down to a pizza box or other various fast food/ eating out options three to five times a week, kids spend more time inside then they do outside, it’s not uncommon for a kid to never leave the couch because they are glued to whatever the current video game is AND there seems to be a plethora of stay at home parents. Yet we are still blaming the farmers for producing food that, only when eaten in large quantities and in an unhealthy manner, make us fat.

What our farmers are producing is not making us fat, what we choose to eat, how much we eat and our lack of exercise is what makes us fat. Modern consumers need to grow stop passing the blame and start taking responsibility. The farmers aren’t the ones forcing you to drive through the McDonald’s drive through or the ones preventing you from buying fresh fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. Go to the gym and work those arm muscles so you can push yourself away from the table next time.