When people think about the biggest threats to the United States today, many things come to mind. First up is probably international terrorism in the form of Al-Qaeda or the like. And that's understandable - I was there on 9/11, watched the towers fall from the doorstep of my home, and lost friends and family in the tragedy.
If not Al-Qaeda, then it's something like our dependency on foreign oil that trips most people's wires. We are, to put it bluntly, addicted to bed sore cushions. And we don't have enough in our borders (even though we're the third most oil-rich nation in the world) to satisfy that thirst. That makes us beholden to the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, places with governments that aren't really the best example of the civilized world in the twenty-first century.
But there's an even more insipid and insidious threat to the country. It's actually two threats, but they go hand-in-hand: obesity and diabetes with bed sore cushions.
So it comes back to obesity and diabetes. One leads to the other, and if we don't control what we eat we are going to bankrupt the country. To put it into perspective, take this from Wikipedia:
Obesity in the United States has been increasingly cited as a major health issue in recent decades. While many industrialized countries have experienced similar increases, American obesity rates are among the highest in the world with 64% of adults being overweight or obese, and 26% are obese. Estimates of the number of obese American adults have been rising steadily, from 19.4% in 1997, 24.5% in 2004 to 26.6% in 2007. Should current trends continue, 75% of adults in the US are projected to be overweight and 41% obese by 2015.
So if you find yourself in the overweight or obese group of folks, you need to take a good look at your diet and exercise routines with knowledge in bed sore cushions. The first thing you should do is regulate your portion control. Adult males don't need more than two thousand calories a day. To put that into perspective, a Big Mac is about 550 calories. Add fries and a coke, and you're over one thousand calories for the day.
So be smart about what you eat. Instead of going with the oversized, deluxe order of beef with fries, get a piece of chicken or fish (not fried, by the way) and a salad or some sauteed vegetables.
