I tend to agree with Dogmama.

However, from my training as a sociologist, I can't help but have a look at cross-tables showing obesity rates and socio-economic status levels.

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First, let's note that there is a general trend toward getting heavier, in all groups of the North American society. Of course we all know rich people who are big and poor people who are thin as a rail. The general correlation though is that the less socio-economically privileged, the more chances there are of being overweight or obese.

Now this is open to different explanations, but I really think that it's a bit easy to says that it's because poor people are lazy. I have really enjoyed reading Barbara Ehrenreich's book 'Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America' and found her insight into the working-poor life extremely enlightening. In particular, I appreciated how she described her relation to cooking and food when she was working two jobs or just crazy hours, and how constituting a base for eating well (getting the basic ingredients that actually make what you cook taste like something, buying fresh fruits and produce, etc.) was expensive or plain difficult. I personally shop for groceries at small markets and I realize how much more expensive it is. When I go to other parts of town (when cycling for example) and stop at grocery stores, I am always surprised at the narrowness of the selection of fresh food and broadness of the selection of junk. I also happen to have a "food culture": I was raised on a farm, always ate fresh produce (I still cringe pretty badly at eating tomatoes and asparus in the Winter!) and basic ingredients (using almost nothing that was prepared in advance by some industry), and was taught how important it was to have three balanced meals a day. Not everyone, or, dare I say, not many people were raised like that. Hence most have a lot to learn about healthy life habits, and few have the means to make them come true.

And I won't get started about exercising.

In what I picture as an ideal world, people would not have to go to gyms or consciously 'exercise' to stay fit. They would live close to their work place and walk or bike there, run errands on foot, carry their babies on their backs, etc. I always lived in a medium-size city (Montreal) where doing this was possible. Most people around me did not exercise on purpose, but most were pretty fit and we had among the lowest obesity rates across Canada. Of course, on a nice Sunday, those who feel like going for a 100 km bike ride can do so, but others might rather stick to a good book and take a walk in the park at sunset, and stop for a few minutes to dance at the drumfest if they felt like it.

But I was a middle-class student with the means to afford such a lifestyle, in a very particular city. Most people in America life in very different circumstances, and such a lifestyle is absolutely not accessible for most.

So I tend to agree with Dogmama that obesity is a public health problem and should be treated as such. But I know we have to keep our eyes open for social and economic determinants to this public health problem. The way our cities, lives and societies are arranged at this moment do not give many chances to less privileged people to eat well and live healthy lifestyles, let alone exercise.

It is our responsibility as individuals to take care of ourselves, eat and live with care. But it is also our responsibility as individuals to work towards healthier cities and lives for all by getting involved as citizens for better cities and societies where resources of all sorts are more accessible to all, not just in principle but in fact.

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