Who is responsible for this generations declining health?

Hello :)

I know, a fancy title....anyway today I happened to read an artcle online that stated that the food industry is largerly in fault of the people's bad health these days, that got me thinking whether that's true or maybe there are some other reasons as to why people are increasingly getting more overweight, obese and unhealthy. Even in Estonia over half of the population is either overweight or obese, when I look around me I wouldn't say that it seems that way, but perhaps the average has changed so much that we don't even notice that there's something wrong...anyway lets start with the food industry then.

I am aware that companies are not obligated to make healthy food. Their main goal is to make profit, 

they do what they can, so that people would buy their produce. The first option is to make food that tastes very good, therefore people would continue to buy it, but the problem here is that most people enjoy high fat and high sugar foods, because lets face it they do taste good. Obvioulsy eating that kind of foods is not the best for our health, it's ok to have them every now and then, but not on a daily bases. The other option is to make food that is cheap, so people would buy more of it, but in this case cheap produce usually means that it's not very high quality. For example polyunsaturated plant oils are very widely used in the food industry, because they're inexpensive, but those oils are filled with omega 6 fatty acids, which tilt our fatty acid balance outiside of the healthy range. Again as with anything it's not that you have to cut out these plant oils completly, they're not some devils creation, they simply have to be balanced out. As with everything balance is very important.

In that sense I understand food manufactuers, they want people to actually buy whatever it is that they're making, but at the same time maybe they should be blamed, because afterall our health is at stake. On the other hand noone is telling us to eat those things that are unhealthy for us, yes they are on the shelves and they look so good, but we don't have to buy them, so maybe it's our fault instead?

That got me thinking that if we all slowly started to make healthier choices for ourselves, maybe the companies that are currently making not so healthy foods would switch to making healthier alternatives, finding ways to make it taste good and make it at least a bit more inexpensive than healthy foods are at the moment, since they are thought to be more of a niche rather than a necessity.

I do believe that people can control the state of their health very much by eating well and working out a little bit every now and then, the recommendation, which at least here is 30 min 4 times a week, is not that much and the healthy eating recommendations aren't outrageous, I just wish people would be educated more about it, because right now a lot of people are still unaware. Even if they want to do something good for their bodies, they don't know where to start, because the amount of information out is immense and as always a lot of it is not very accurate.

Anyway these are just some thoughts that came to my mind while reading that article, hope it was interesting.

Kaiela :)