Greg Beato writes about the "contradiction" of higher obesity and America's fitness obsession:
Such assessments ignore the other half of what you might call the fitness divide. In the wake of President Kennedy’s call for more national vigor, a culture of hardcore fitness began to take root alongside the culture of fatness. And more than any federal calisthenics guides the President’s Council on Youth Fitness produced, it was technology, prosperity, and our consumerist way of life that made this new culture possible. If fast food chains gave us 1,000-calorie milkshakes, they also freed up time to go jogging. If VCRs gave us the couch potato, they also gave us aerobics videos. If technology made it less necessary to expend energy in pursuit of daily subsistence, it also gave us Nike air soles, polypropylene running shorts, heart-rate monitors, and organic granola. Most importantly, it gave non-elite athletes an opportunity to run 70 miles a week. Between 1965 and 2003, according to a study in the July 2007 issue of Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics, leisure time increased by six to eight hours per week for men and four to eight hours per week for women.
Sure. If you're wealthy enough to afford a gym membership, if you aren't working more than one job, if you can afford a nanny, then your weight is in large part within your control. If you happen to live in an isolated urban neighborhood that doesn't even have a decent supermarket let alone a Gold's Gym, then you probably can't afford to take advantage of many of the things Beato is describing. Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in Washington, D.C., which manages to be one of the healthiest cities in the country while its black residents have the lowest life expectancy of any state in the union.
Rich people are running more marathons, and poor people are staying unhealthy. That's a structural problem. I don't know that Congress can solve it by fiat, but it's not just a matter of lacing up your Nikes, especially since a decent pair of running shoes is pretty expensive. Also, 70 miles a week? I run a little more than a hundred miles a month, and that's a lot more than most people I know.
