[DOWNLOAD] "Drifting Away from Nature: The Cost of Convenience." by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Drifting Away from Nature: The Cost of Convenience.
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 263 KB
Description
Introduction The alarming increase in the incidence of obesity over the last several decades has justifiably become fodder for copious research concerning human dietary and behavioral patterns, genetic predispositions, and economic policies that might explain the collective expansion of the human waistline. Ultimately, the goal in discerning the cause(s) of the world's overweight problem would be the ability to ameliorate the negative effects on health by implementing appropriate steps of intervention. However, and perhaps not surprisingly, this process has been easier said than done. First, the potential causes are multitudinous and have become so deeply entrenched in cultural and psychological patterns of day to day living and commerce that single solutions like "consumer education," though well intentioned and necessary, are likely to fail in isolation. Second, the data from current research are not always definitive and are sometimes contradictory. As contributing factors to the obesity epidemic, sedentary lifestyles, electronic media, processed foods, genetics, family structure, socioeconomic status and other elements have been investigated, all with thorough validity. To definitively explain the dramatic rise in the incidence of overweight and obesity, however, the true root of the problem must be distinguished from the many peripheral causes. In fact all of the factors mentioned above do have a common thread, and that thread is the cultivation of a culture that is increasingly and consistently distancing itself from the natural (that is, non-human) world. The rise in overweight/obesity coincidentally parallels this distancing in two significant, documented ways: 1) the lack of human contact with nature and natural environments, and 2) the over growing disconnect between our food and the natural environment.