What a Waste – What a Waist:

The Conservation - Health Connection

John Kilbourne, Ph.D.

It seems that the only thing increasing faster than America’s waistline is America’s

waste of natural resources and energy. Simply stated, America is too gluttonous and too

fat; Hummer-hungry and Hummer-sized.

Nationwide, more that 129.6 million American adults (64%) are overweight or obese.

Obesity in America has increased threefold since the 1960’s with nearly two-thirds of

adults and nine million children being overweight or obese (Brownell, 2003).

Researchers believe that if present trends do not change our children will be the first in

history to have shorter life-spans than their parents (Olshansky, 2005). Dr. Frank Booth,

a physiologist at the University of Missouri, has even give a name to the epidemic of

overweight and obesity that is killing so many Americans. He calls it, sedentary death

syndrome (Deford, 2003). The costs, both in health care and lost productivity associated

with the above exceed one hundred billion dollars (100B) per year (Symon, 2004).

Overweight residents in California alone cost the State over twenty-two billion dollars

(22B) per year, an amount equal to the salaries of 660,000 entry level school teachers

(Nordqvist, 2005). The cost in Michigan is nearly nine billion dollars (9B) per year,

$1,175 per adult resident (Chenoweth, 2003).

The bulging of America is often overlooked because as American’s have gotten bigger

so have their homes, furniture, automobiles, clothes, even the caskets that hold their

jumbo-sized corpses. Home sizes in the past thirty years have ballooned by fifty percent

while the number of residents in these homes has decreased (MotherJones, 2005). Gas-

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guzzling, sport utility vehicle sales have increased steadily over the past four years (Van

Tsui, 2005). And, for the first time casket makers are manufacturing super-sized models,

some as wide as forty-four inches (The average is 24” – 26”), to accommodate the

increasing number of Americans who are dying from sedentary death syndrome

(Connolly, 2005).

America’s indulgence is fed by a greedy, unrestrained, and unparalleled consumption

of natural resources and energy that fuels gluttonous people, their homes, and their

automobiles. America, which is five-percent of the world’s population, consumes

twenty-one million barrels of oil per day, twenty-five percent of the world’s total

(Samuelson, 2005). The end result is excess human waist(s) and excess waste(s) in the

environment. It would take five planet earths to satisfy the needs of every person in the

world if each person consumed as much as Americans (Quaker Earthcare Witness, 2005).

Our family had personal experience with the devastating effects of America’s wasteful

practices when we moved to the Arctic and lived with Canada’s Inuit as part of a

sabbatical study. Sadly, we witnessed first-hand the pollution from America that travels

to the Arctic with the northbound winds and gets trapped in the caribou and marine

mammals that are integral to the Inuit’s ancestral diet.

The bodies of Arctic people, particularly Greenland’s Inuit contain the highest
concentrations of industrial chemicals and pesticides found anywhere on Earth –
levels so extreme that the breast milk and tissues of some Greenlanders could be
classified as hazardous waist (Cone, 2004).

Our sadness was heightened knowing that our new Arctic friends were not to blame

for the sickness that harms their babies and children. It is Americans who are responsible

for many of the toxins that plague Arctic people. It is also Americans who are grossly

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irresponsible in their devotion to conserve and protect the environment. The Inuit have

few, if any ways to protect themselves from America’s irresponsibility.

Polluting Our Bodies – Polluting Our Planet

There is an unmistakable link between America’s overweight and obesity crisis, and

America’s environmental crisis. When you juxtapose the data from each you see that

during the past twenty years Americans have dramatically increased their waists while at

the same time increasing their waste of natural resources and energy.

Obesity Trends* Among U.S. Adults

BRFSS, 1990, 1995, 2005
(*BMI ≥30, or about 30 lbs overweight for 5’4” person)

1990 1995

2005

No Data <10% 10%–14% 15%–19% 20%–24% 25%–29% ≥30%

Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, CDC.

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 The Conservation – Health Connection

America’s interest in the connections between environmental conservation and good

health has a long and well documented history. In 1857 Samuel H. Hammond wrote

about the connections in his book, Wild Northern Scenes: Sporting Adventures with

Rifle and Rod. In his book he celebrates the Adirondack wilds and advocates the

preservation of wilderness for recreation and rejuvenation. Hammond was followed by

other voices such as George Bird Grinnell (1870), organizer of the Audubon Society;

President Theodore Roosevelt (1901) whose domestic policy focused on conservation

and recreation; and Sir Robert Baden-Powell (1908) the founder of the Boy Scouts

movement whose mission was healthy character development through nature and

recreation (The Library of Congress).

Throughout America’s history recreation (To re-create, give new life, refresh), has

helped citizens better understand and appreciate the environment and good health. The

International Olympic Committee recently made environmental conservation the third

pillar of Olympism along with sport and culture. Put simply, people who participate in

recreation and outdoor sporting activities appreciate clean and unspoiled air, water, and

land, and good health.

The connections between conservation and good health have led to an emerging

science known as Conservation Medicine or Conservation Health. The basic idea is

simple: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment,

precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are

not fully established scientifically (Moss, 2004).” Conservation Health is, “…about the

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interconnectedness of all life and the fact that human behavior has consequences (Moss,

2004).”

Our collective behavior is comparable, as someone once put it, to yeast cells in a
wine vat, destined to grow until overcome by our own waste products. The result
is equivalent to a binge – yeast cells feeding on sugars; human feeding on fossil
fuels. If there is a better analogy, I have not heard it. The difference is that,
unlike yeast cells, we supposedly have both the possibility of foreknowledge that
the “morning after” looms ahead and, presumably, the intelligence to do
something smarter instead (Orr, 2006).

Environmental conservation and health are interconnected. Intelligent measures to

alter our destructive behavior must address both simultaneously.

Education: Our Best Hope

America’s best hope for dealing with its health and environmental crisis is to focus a

significant amount of our energies on young people. Simply stated, we must make health

and environmental conservation an important part of every child’s education. And,

because many American families have limited knowledge and understanding of the

problems and solutions relevant to both, it is our schools and teachers who must provide

the resources and serve as the catalysts to change current trends.

When one examines current trends related to health, physical education, and science

education one can easily see the inadequacies. For example, among high school age

students only 29% attend daily physical education classes, a dramatic decline from the

41% who attended in 1991 (CDC, 2005). With two school age children I have witnessed

this erosion first hand. Our ten year old son has one forty-minute physical education

class per week, and our high school daughter has none. Is it any wonder that American

children are overweight and obese? Equally disturbing is the fact that the American

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educational system is not preparing citizens to know and understand a world that is

increasingly dominated by technology and science. This reality comes at a time when

many parents, school boards, and politicians have focused their energies not on teaching

science and the scientific method, but instead using valuable time required for science

education to teach intelligent design, a non-science subject. A study by the National

Center for Education Statistics found that young people in the United States rank 15th in

math and ninth in science proficiency when compared to their peers in 45 other countries

(Lloyd, 2005).

As a first step to shift current trends schools and teachers can begin to use an

integrative approach to teaching health, physical education and science, specifically as

they relate to healthy living and conservation. One example of this approach is the work

taking place at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Grand Valley State University’s Department of Movement Science together with

GVSUs School of Engineering have teamed up to create an innovative program called,

S P A R K L E – Spinning Physical and Renewable Kinetic Living Energy. S P A R K L E

is using human motion on an exercise bicycle to enhance health and physical fitness and

teach science based conservation, while at the same time producing usable electric

energy.

Students from Michigan are actually powering their classrooms using SPARKLE

bicycle generators. In addition to promoting health and fitness, the bicycle generators

create light and recharge useable batteries that the children use to power their games,

cellular telephones, and music players.

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 The goal of S P A R K L E is to create a new generation of global
residents (Sparklers) who understand the importance
of health/fitness and renewable energy.

Any hope for a graceful and enriched future must include natural harmony with our

environment and with our bodies. The connections between the two are tightly woven,

what affects one affects the other. If each of us makes an effort to become a Sparkler,

like those being created in Michigan, we can collectively preserve and protect our health

and the health of our plant now and for the future.

John Kilbourne, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Movement Science, and

Director of the SPARKLE Project at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.

References

Brownell, K. & Battle, K. (2004). Food fight: The inside story of the food industry,
America’s obesity crisis and what we can do about it. New York: McGraw Hill.

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Center for Disease Control. (2005). “Promoting better health.”
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Chenoweth, D. (2003). “The economic cost of physical inactivity in Michigan,”

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Cone, M. (2004, Jan. 18). “Pollutants drift north, making Inuits’ traditional diet toxic,”
Boston Globe, p. A12.

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Lloyd, M. (2005, September 20). “Investing in new ideas,” Grand Rapids Press, pp. A6.

Moss, D. (2004). “Conservation health,” The Environmental Magazine.

MotherJones (2005, March/April). “This new home,” MotherJones.

http:/www.motherjones.com.

Nordqvist, C. (2005, April 6). “Overweight costing California $22 billion per year,”
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Olshansky, S.J. (2005, March 17). “A potential decline in life expectancy in the United
States in the 21st century,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 352:1138-1145,
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Orr, D. W. (2006, October 20). “A Meditation on Building,” The Chronicle of Higher

Education, p. B3.

Quaker Earthcare Witness. (2005). “Sustainable energy: An earth-friendly view,” pp.

3. http://www.fcun.org/sustain/energy.html

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