It is both painfully grim and wonderfully exciting to see the outcomes of the technological innovations man has invented in the last century. Look at all the current gadgets that make it easy to live by by lessening human physical involvement. Cars have reduced our locomotion, appliances have reduced our house chores; every thing that we need is getting motorized. Instead of human fuel, we are maximizing earth fuels. We are successfully depleting the earth’s reserved energy as we increase the fuel storage in our bodies leading to obesity.
Certain quarters don’t even worry about obesity. They say, “Look at the medical innovations and interventions that have increased lifespan and decreased mortality among individuals. In a couple of decades, technology will be the ‘god’ that will lead us to semi-god status. Though nature has created us, technology will innovate and modify us. We foresee a future that will be intervention-driven. If you have a disease, a simple tweak of your genes will correct that. Obesity is only a chemical ‘correction’ away. If your heart fails, a new heart will replace it. If you had brain damage like stroke, a new tissue can be used to patch up the damage. Oh, there will be many many possibilities.”
People like me will eventually be relegated to the sidelines, remembered as ‘those old fashioned men who insisted on doing it the old way’. But let me tell you that the future innovation I am talking about is still far far away from our present time. What I am writing about now is the present reality and how to resolve our present dilemma using our present resources.
Lets face the facts: We have increasing obesity for the last two decades and it is very prevalent among our youth who should be strong and healthy to guard our future. This obesity have problems tied with it - diabetes, heart disease, multi-organ failures, poor mental functioning and worse, sluggishness and slowness that may lead to depression and mental breakdowns. These are our future pilots and doctors and scientists and artists and soldiers and politicians and businessmen and teachers. These are the very backbone of our country. But based on recent studies and analysis, these kids will prematurely be deprived of peak performances due to the epidemic of obesity. There are new findings now that the current youth will live less by at least one year compared to their parents. That is a travesty. It is a sad reflection of our current health status as a nation As I said earlier, unless we find a magic formula to resolve health problems via intervention of chemicals or surgery or implantation or gene modification, this country will be headed to a miserable fate.
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