A Nation Full and Still Hungry: The Many Roots of America’s Obesity Epidemic

“In Japan, vending machines carry green tea, barley tea, sparkling water. In America, they hum with soda. And somehow, that difference says a lot.”

— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

I’ve always been struck by how differently food is treated in other places. In Japan, there’s something deeply respectful about the way meals are prepared, offered, and eaten. Here in America, food feels more frantic—more like fuel, less like care. And yet, food is meant to bring us together. It’s supposed to nourish us, not just keep us going, but connect us, comfort us, sustain us. But somewhere along the way, that shifted. Now it often feels like food has become either an unhealthy comfort or a silent punishment—something we turn to for escape, or something we deny ourselves because of impossible pressures. What was meant to feed us has started to confuse us instead.

The Culture of Convenience

In America, nourishment has become a product—something packaged, sold, and rushed through. Most of us aren’t choosing fast food because we’re lazy or unaware. We’re choosing it because we’re tired. Because we’re working long hours, raising kids, chasing paychecks, or simply trying to stay afloat. The system is fast, so our food has to be faster. And somewhere in that cycle, food stopped being about care and started becoming about convenience.

It’s not just about what’s available—it’s about what’s affordable. Highly processed foods are cheap, heavily marketed, and everywhere. And when you’re exhausted, stressed, or living paycheck to paycheck, those foods feel like the only option. We don’t lack information—we lack support, time, and rest.

In countries like Japan, there is often more reverence around food—even in small, everyday ways. Meals are smaller, more balanced, and more mindful. It’s not considered socially acceptable to eat or drink while walking or riding public transportation. There’s an unspoken encouragement to pause, to sit, and to give your attention to the act of eating. Even when meals are simple, the moment is respected.

Here, we eat in cars, at desks, in between meetings, or while scrolling through our phones. We’ve grown used to rushing through our meals the same way we rush through our days. But the truth is, the way we eat reflects the way we live—and we’re living fast, stressed, and undernourished in more ways than one.

The Soil We Forget to Feed

In nature, balance is everything. Soil that is overworked and never replenished eventually stops yielding anything healthy. No matter how much you water it, no matter how much sun it gets, if the earth itself is depleted, the roots won’t grow strong. Our bodies are no different.

We push ourselves hard. We run on caffeine, convenience, and stress. And just like soil stripped of nutrients, we can’t thrive without deep, intentional nourishment. But nourishment isn’t just calories or vitamins—it’s care, time, rhythm. It’s giving your body food that supports you and space to actually receive it.

When we stop seeing food as a chance to restore ourselves—and instead treat it like a box to check or a craving to silence—we lose the richness that comes from slowness, from ritual, from intention. A garden doesn’t bloom because you throw seeds at it and walk away. It blooms because someone stayed long enough to tend it.

Nourishment and the Weight of Expectations

In America, much of the narrative around food and weight falls on women. We are told what to eat, what not to eat, how to look, how to feel, and most of it is tied to impossible standards. Women’s bodies are often viewed as projects—something to perfect, to control, to change. But nourishing our bodies isn’t about perfection. It’s about finding balance and giving ourselves the grace to just be.

For mothers, this weight is compounded. The pressure to feed our children well, while simultaneously maintaining a certain image of health, can feel suffocating. We spend so much energy making sure others are cared for that it’s easy to forget that we need to nourish ourselves, too. In many ways, this mirrors the societal shift from nourishment as a communal, slow act to one that’s rushed, fragmented, and often shaped by others’ expectations.

Even in places like Japan, where food is often treated with greater respect, body image pressures still run deep. Thinness is often portrayed as the ideal, especially for women. This can lead to mental health struggles that mirror those in America—but from the opposite direction. Where we’ve leaned into the idea of body positivity, it’s sometimes been distorted into something that glorifies unhealthy habits under the banner of self-love. It’s important to celebrate and accept our bodies, but that celebration should also include a commitment to health—not just comfort.

We’ve made it almost impossible to have honest conversations about this. To critique the extremes has become taboo, even if the intention is care. But health isn’t hateful. And thinness isn’t the only marker of wellness, just as curviness or size isn’t either. We should be creating space for every body shape—as long as we are doing right by our health and tending to our well-being with honesty and compassion.

Sometimes, the most important message we can send is that food is a source of joy, connection, and care, not something to fear, restrict, or weaponize. Not something to use to punish or prove ourselves. When we shift the focus back to nourishment—in all forms—we begin to heal something deeper.

Returning to the Table

We were never meant to navigate nourishment alone. Somewhere along the way, we traded shared meals for solo snacks, sacred routines for calorie counts, and self-trust for external rules. But it’s not too late to return—to ourselves, to slower rhythms, to a kind of nourishment that extends beyond the plate.

What if eating was an act of presence again? What if feeding ourselves and our families became something soft and steady, instead of fast and fraught? In Japan, I’ve seen mothers gently packing bento boxes each morning—meals made with balance, care, and an eye for beauty. Not extravagant, but intentional. Not perfect, but enough. That kind of care isn’t exclusive to one culture—it’s a mindset, a way of being we can all return to, even in small ways.

The obesity epidemic in America isn’t just about food—it’s about disconnection. Disconnection from time, from rest, from community, and from our own bodies. Healing won’t come from shame or extremes. It comes from asking, softly and honestly: What do I need today? How can I offer care to this body that carries me?

Maybe the solution isn’t in another diet or cultural ideal. Maybe it’s in the simple act of sitting down, slowing down, and beginning again—with tenderness.

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

— Hippocrates

“What nourishes you? Not just what fills you, but what truly feeds your body and your spirit?”

— Petals & Ponderings