Nature-Deficit Disorder

[groovedaddy]

TUCSON — Your day breaks, your mind aches for something stimulating to match the stirrings of the season. The gate at the urban edge is open, here to the Santa Catalina Mountains, and yet you turn inward, to pixels and particle-board vistas.

Something’s amiss. A third of all American adults — check, it just went up to 35.7 percent — are obese. The French don’t even have a word for fat, Paul Rudnick mused in a mock-Parisian tone in The New Yorker last week. “If a woman is obese,” he wrote, “we simply call her American.”

And, of course, our national branding comes with a host of deadly side effects: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, certain kinds of cancer. Medical costs associated with obesity and inactivity are nearly $150 billion a year.

This grim toll is well known. Cripes: maybe surgery is the answer, or a menu of energy drinks and vodka (the Ann Coulter diet?). Count the calories. Lay off the muffins. Atkins one week, Slim-Fast the next. We spend more than $50 billion on the diet-industrial complex and have little to show for it (or too much).

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/nature-deficit-disorder/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120330

[tabatha]

1. I am listening to Louw's "The Nature Principle"

for the second time. Good stuff. (from AudibleManager - lots of excellent non-fiction stuff, from which I have learned a great deal.)

People should be out removing invasive species rather than staying inside a gym on artificial machines. Learning about the native plants and birds in the area.

Nature is my antidote for stress.

[groovedaddy]

2. "Nature is my antidote for stress." Amen! n.t

[MineralMan]

3. Of course French has a word for fat.

Here are translations of "He is fat" and "She is fat:"

Il est gros. Elle est grosse.

Here are the same two sentences, with obese substituted for fat.

Il est obèse. Elle est obèse.

While fewer French people are fat than Americans, it's a mistake to say there is no word for it in French.

This makes the article incorrect on an important point. What else is incorrect in it?

Si on mange trop de graisse et sucre, on deviendra gros.

[semillama]

9. I believe the author was making a joke.

Go back and read it again with that in mind, and I think you'll see that was the intent. That sentence caught me too, until I realized it was a joke related to the primary topic that Americans don't get outside as much as they need to, and that might be a contributing element to the obesity crisis here.

[MineralMan]

11. Could be. I still think the post is appropriate. Some people actually

believe such things.

[cbayer]

4. What a great article and I could not agree more.

Get outside!

Thanks for posting.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Although obesity is significantly less common in France than America...

the problem exists, and is increasing, there too.

Here is an interesting article about it, which suggests that one reason why obesity is not as common in France as some other countries is that the French have a strong tradition of eating at meals, and not at other times.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/06/139042221/the-french-are-getting-fatter-too

[handmade34]

6. I feel it...

if I don't get out very often... I went up to Catawba Falls this morning

from the top of the lower falls




delighted to see this family going out on the trail as I was coming back...

[cbayer]

7. That looks beautiful. I am fortunate to basically live outdoors.

I live on a boat and most often am in isolated places where I am a visitor to another world. I see incredible amounts of spectacular scenery and animals of the sky and sea just doing their thing all day.

On the occasions when we have to go back to 'merica, I feel like I am suffocating.

[handmade34]

8. I understand

I am continuously a visitor to another world (even..., no, especially in populated places)... I have had to learn to adapt but I am ALWAYS most at home in the forest (entering anaprastha)

[semillama]

10. my main hobby is birding

So I go outdoors a lot, or try to anyway. I'm also fortunate that my job takes me out of doors (or at least it used to until the economy slowed and we stopped budgeting higher-level folks for basic fieldwork jobs).

Go outside when it's nice, but also when it's terrible. Both are great experiences.