The topic I have chosen for my weekly analysis this week is more of a movement than an item. The movement to live a simpler, healthier lifestyle has become an event of popular culture. I chose this because living healthier has become so popular. Everywhere you turn there is some book, gadget, pill, or store that is for promoting better health. Twenty years ago you would not have seen daily segments on the local news telling you how to lose those extra twenty pounds or eat the healthiest meal. Today every news show has a daily segment. They teach me how to cook, how to eat healthy, how to exercise the quickest and most effective way. They tell me I do not need exercise equipment that a simple soup can and some rope can get me into perfect shape. There are local gyms in every town. All the local restaurants have low-cal, low carb dinner options and some even offer the adult happy meal with pedometers or some other gadget to help me measure how lazy I have become. There are even video games to help you exercise and count calories. There is always a new infomercial on the latest piece of gym equipment you can buy for your home. There is the total gym, the stepper, the abs lounger, the yoga balls, the Pilates bands, the Billy Blanks exercise videos, the treadmills, the pedometers to measure how many steps you walked, the televisions shows like the Biggest Loser to help motivate you, and yes the low fat, no sugar, one hundred calorie snack.
I think when we look at items of popular culture they have mostly been designed to make things quicker, simpler, and cause us to spend less energy doing whatever we want to do. Some of the items of Popular Culture have caused us to become lazier, busier, and generally less active. Now Popular Culture is developing many items to counter the laziness we have developed. However, does sitting on the couch watching a show about how to eat right and exercise help me become healthier? I suppose it does if I am doing crunches on my yoga ball while toning my arms with soup cans.
1 comment:
Excellent article, everything you wrote is so true. There is always some type of new and improved exercise equipment or diet that will work wonders on getting you in shape. Of course, I start out eating healthly and exercising for a limited time and then I go back to eating bad and not exercising at all.
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