Herald Standard Article + Geneva

Weekend in Geneva was fantastic. The beautiful autumn weather has arrived. Below is an op/ed I wrote for the hometown newspaper.

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The elderly French woman looked at me, before saying a word to the class, and asked to the sole American in the cosmopolitan class of students, what is your country's health-care system?

This was the day after yet another proclamation about the state of our nation's health-care system that made international headlines. She wanted to try to make sense of our health-care "crisis." So do I.

I had many opinions I wanted to share, but chose my words wisely and tried my best. What I wanted to say, but am not yet able to articulate in my rudimentary French, is that the real problem isn't our nation's health-care system, albeit broken and in need of some fixin', but is the state of our nation's health.

We have reached a point in our incredible civilization that the very act of survival, eating, is killing us. The Department of Health and Human Services projects the average American life expectancy will decline by as much as five years in the next few decades.

If true, and look around you, KFC, McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, etc, this will be the first drop in life expectancy in the modern era. We have moved, as a society, from people who eat to live, to people who live to eat. Am I calling on Americans to give up good food? Absolutely not. The host family I am living with in Lyon, France, could not be more typically Lyonnais. Nightly we eat a phenomenal local dish, always accompanied with the appropriate bottle of wine, and finish with delicious cheese, desserts, and coffee. Yet their waste lines would be the envy of the nearly 30.2 percent of Americans who are defined as "obese" (27.7 percent in Pennsylvania). What is their secret? Nothing special, really.

My family thinks I am a bit foolish with my workout regimen, running, sit-ups, push-ups, and the whole lot of physical punishment I gladly put my body through.

Maybe they are right, I enjoy it, but it isn't for everyone. This is all to say, they aren't keeping their figure by slaving in the gym.

Are they active? Yes, tennis twice a week, a healthy walk with the dog, and the occasional bike ride into town to pick up some bread, but they aren't wasting their money on gym memberships they'll never use.

They eat right, in terms of portions and times of the day. They eat generally healthy, lots of fruits and vegetables, and very few candy bars. Why? Because food is a critical part of their culture, it brings us together at the table, and it makes us happy. But if the thing that is making you "happy" is also killing you, should you really be happy?

Obesity increases your personal risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, and it is hurting this country as well in the pocketbook. $78.5 billion alone paid for the direct and indirect medical costs attributed to obesity issues in 1998 (over $100 billion in 2009 dollars) in our country.

Imagine what that price tag could be if you factored in the new pants purchased due to national bulging waistline. All jokes aside, for most Americans, obesity is a choice, the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis found that nearly one third of our calories come from "junk-food." So before we criticize this healthcare plan, or that healthcare plan, let us take a good hard look at our personal health choices, each morning, starting at breakfast. Until then, I'll keep struggling trying to explain Medicare to my French teacher.

A Uniontown native, Nate Webster is a third-year cadet at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. He majors in African Studies and environmental engineering and is working and studying abroad in Europe this fall. Nate is the son of Daniel and Cynthia Webster and spent most of his youth playing basketball in the Uniontown Area YMCA. He hopes the Pittsburgh Pirates pull out a winning season in his lifetime.

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