The Obsession-Health

Americans are preoccupied with their body weight. More than $30 billion a year is spent on gimmicks, gadgets, and strategies to trim, tuck, and tone waistlines. Of adults, 50 million are dieting, and most of them are repeaters, averaging 2.3 diets per year. At any given time more than half of all women and more than one fourth of men are trying to lose weight. Even children are getting the message that dieting is in. Nearly 50% of 9-year-old girls and up to 80% of 10-year-old girls have a fear of fatness or have already indulged in binge eating.

The evidence for this obsession can be found in advertisements and the news itself. Numerous television celebrities have experienced instant popularity by engaging in some sort of special diet or weight loss program. Both the print and video media show countless numbers of advertisements that associate super svelte body images with the use of almost every imaginable product. Consumers demand low calorie versions of every consumable food, and much of this demand is motivated more by the desire to achieve an unobtainable physique rather than for health reasons. Carried to the extreme, consumers can be observed counting the number of calories even in a dose of laxatives. The phrase "calorie anxiety" applies to many Americans. Even health magazines and professional journals reinforce this preoccupation by featuring headlines of diet articles or studies on magazine covers. If some new finding is released from the scientific community, it will surely be featured as the headline on national and local news shows and will quickly be followed by featured stories. For some people the obsession with weight is so intense that it causes serious body image problems, distorts their self-esteem, and eventually leads to eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, two conditions that were almost unheard of 20 years ago. For many other people the effects are more subtle. Whereas they may not be anorexic or bulimic, they develop aversive attitudes toward food, eating, and mealtime. Rather than serving as a source of pleasure and enjoyment, the eating experience serves as a constant test of willpower that rarely yields positive results. For too many people, attitudes about appearance, body weight, and food combined with the ubiquitous messages and body images promulgated by the media form a vicious cycle of guilt, denial, and unhappiness. The challenge for many people is to break this cycle by constructing a realistic view of their body, establishing a positive attitude toward food, and formulating realistic strategies to address the weight problem.

Becoming a Responsible Health-Care Consumer

Traditionally, Americans have had a rather passive attitude toward health care. Whether it was taking medicine, purchasing health-care products, undergoing surgery, or having a diagnostic test administered, the general attitude was simply to follow orders. Fortunately, this attitude is changing. People are viewing themselves as active participants in their health care. They are asking questions, placing demands on health-care providers (people and/or facilities that provide health-care services), getting second opinions, and sometimes even refusing treatments. People now realize that they must assume more responsibility for safeguarding their health. With this responsibility, however, comes the challenge of knowing what people can and should do for themselves. The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for becoming an informed, active participant in the health-care marketplace.