THE AFRICAN AMERICAN VICIOUS WEIGHT LOSS CYCLE cont.

Tyler Perry’s movie, Why Did I Get Married, struck a cord of pain with our community for several reasons. However, there was one undeniable, universal appeal that of identification with the overweight character, played by Jill Scott. From the embarrassment that obesity caused the character when denied air travel, to the unrelenting ridicule from her mate, and even self-degrading comments was, “oh too familiar” for a lot of us.
According to New York Times Reviewers, Perry charters waters that other writers only dare to present on-screen without the shield of humor. Agreeably and proudly we applaud him for having the courage to highlight such a pervasive and painful issue, while maintaining dignity and integrity!

We need to have this issue out in the open for dialogue, in an up-close and personal fashion so that we may get at the crux of the problem – once for all time. With obesity stats for Blacks off the charts like Tyler Perry’s movie’s sales, we need to turn on the floodlights so that we all can see clearly what our path should really be to get healthy and lean.
In part I. ( African American weight loss cycle) it was eluded to that there may in fact be some conspiracies involved in keeping the Black population sick and overweight for possible financial gains. Naturally, we would be prompted to ask - WHY us? Here are two possibilities:

Some may be unaware that, based on recent studies conducted by Hunter Miller Group, research analysis, Blacks have powerful spending power, especially for certain things like “what we eat”. A lot of what we eat is unhealthy and ultimately makes us SICK and FAT. Various industries and entities know this and capitalize off of our spending habits; at great expense to our health and well being.
It is believed that due to a large portion of a less educated sector at the bottom of the food chain, we are absolutely “easy targets” for being recipients of marketing propaganda. It is also believed and widely accepted that Blacks only want to entertain and be entertained, instead of using our time to educate ourselves. You know the statement that has circulated for years that, “Blacks as a whole - don’t read”. If such has an iota of truth to it, we will not know what the rest of the world already knows about life saving health information!

Despite this, though, through just minimal research, some have come to the realization that what we are putting into our bodies and not putting into our bodies is ultimately keeping us FAT, sick, in pain, day in and day out. There are in fact many hidden obesity factors that we have every right to know about - if we so choose to be enlightened. The food industry, diet industry, medical industry and pharmaceutical industry are all respectively having their way with our men, women and children, in a similar fashion as was with our ancestors. Sadly though our ancestors at least knew exactly WHO and WHAT was oppressing them. Do we really know?
One guess would be that if we truly did - we certainly would not be disproportionately affected by obesity and related illness in respects to the rest of the world.
While we don’t need to be put down and ridiculed; we should not keep placating one another by blaming our weight issues all on genetics and being “big boned.” We also should stop blaming it ALL on laziness and lack of willpower. Some national health and body challenges have recently proved otherwise, as many Blacks have gotten off the

couch to get more physically active. The time is ripe to unveil the true causes for our health crisis and reveal to the African American people – the missing link.