The quality of life and lifestyle of societies also determine the eating habits of the people within that society. When obesity – being overweight is mentioned, until very recent years, the first thing that came to mind were the huge hamburgers on the plates of Americans, the gigantic cups of cola, the large pizzas held in their hands and bitten into with huge bites, the extremely overweight women eating compulsively, and the very large and obese men with big bellies whose pants sat under their stomachs because they were too overweight to wear a belt, so they used suspenders instead. Or one would imagine a German eating massive sausages or salamis without bread, along with huge mugs of beer as tall as their hands. In recent years, the concept of globalization—visa-free travel, the internet shrinking thousands of kilometers into centimeters or even smaller units, hours shortening into mere “moments”—has brought people closer, but this closeness and contact has created not only positive cultural interactions but also negative ones.
At this point, people living closely together have begun to transmit certain cultural flaws through written and visual media. The word “contagion” used to be understood as the transmission of physical (somatic) illnesses from one person to another. Now, this word is more often used to describe behavioral and attitudinal changes that spread among people or across cultures. Globalization has naturally affected our attitudes, our language, our forms of communication and relationships, and has changed our lifestyle—just as it has affected our eating habits. For example, the sight of people walking around holding huge cups of coffee from a well-known brand has only become common in recent years. A culture that once drank soup in the morning suddenly began drinking coffee to “wake up” or “feel energized.”
Additionally, the rise of fast-food restaurants in the past decade—now fully absorbed into our culture—means that in an attempt to keep up with the fast pace of time, we eat hamburgers served on a single plate for lunch. Parents give their children addictive, oily French fries and ready-made meat patties as positive reinforcement or rewards—but are these rewards? Punishments? Contributions to illness? This is how the concept of obesity—once foreign—spread, settled, and eventually became part of our identity, popularized through words like “spreading” and “contagious.”
As we have all read and followed, every article on this topic starts with the idea that obesity is spreading, becoming contagious, and becoming a danger. Just as our eating habits changed, the Turkish word "şişmanlık" was replaced by the English word “obesity.” In other words, the name of the phenomenon changed—just like the transformation of our own inherent eating habits. As a healthcare professional, I can say that years ago, this was not even considered an illness. In very old times, being overweight was seen as a sign of wealth, abundance, and prosperity, while being thin was associated with hunger and poverty.
If I am not mistaken, the Ministry of Health declared this year as the “Year of Combating Obesity,” just as efforts were once made to combat smoking. This campaign is beneficial in one sense, but lacking in another. Just as we came to accept smoking as an addiction—and addiction as an illness—obesity is also both an illness and an addiction. But can it be resolved in just one year? Eating behavior is deeply connected to a person’s personality traits and psychological structure—meaning it has a psychological foundation. Given how difficult it is to change behaviors, identifying and understanding the underlying dynamics of someone’s eating addiction is a time-consuming and challenging process. Whether we call it overweight, obesity, or fatness, it is indeed a disease—and one that the Ministry of Health has taken on. But obesity is both a syndrome and a symptom. So why do some people develop this illness? Setting aside genetic factors, what other causes might be responsible—and can these causes really be resolved quickly within a campaign period? This brings us to the title of this article: Are we consuming? Are we being consumed? Are we the consumers? Or the consumed? Shortness of breath while climbing stairs, struggling with indigestion—but continuing to resolve indigestion with acidic, artificial foods that harm the organs.
A heart that is exhausted and strained, blood pressure rising like an arrow. We are not the consumers—we are the consumed. What do we consume for? What consumes us? Artificial foods, stripped of naturalness through endless processing, yet containing the so-called “happiness hormone,” making them addictive. Did you know that bread, starchy baked goods, the yeast and glucose in bread act as stimulants, increasing energy and raising serotonin—the “happiness hormone” in the brain—and that each time you eat such foods, you become dependent on their calming effects and crave them again? And did you know that after initially calming and relaxing you, they cause your energy levels to drop shortly afterward, leading your body to crave this chemical again—just like a substance addict seeking another dose?
Here, I will mention something that may seem unrelated but is actually quite connected: the word “chocoholic” has entered the American vocabulary as a tongue-in-cheek expression. It means “jokingly”—yet when you eat chocolate, you experience a sudden surge of energy and feel good—until the next energy crash. And with this desire, you become unable to live without chocolate, finishing a whole box or package in one sitting. There is nothing funny about this. What I want to express is that those who overconsume such foods are actually trying to regulate or balance their emotional state. But no one is aware of this; they simply say they cannot live without these foods or that they love them. Through cakes, chocolate, carbohydrates, and similar foods that increase serotonin, they try to achieve temporary happiness and relaxation—until the next energy crash or withdrawal episode. How is this any different from an alcoholic craving alcohol, entering withdrawal, and experiencing crisis when they cannot obtain it? Any packaged product presented with attractive colors, shiny wrappers, and delicious but nutritionally empty—and even harmful—content has an addictive nature. Have you ever seen advertisements for healthy, natural, unprocessed foods?
With aesthetic pleasure, taste preferences, cultural interaction, world cuisine, globalization, America, Europe—now we, too, are heading toward becoming a generation wearing suspenders, red-cheeked, far exceeding the normal healthy weight, and moving even further away from where we should be.
