Tubby troubles

You could be forgiven for thinking that electronics have made the 20th and 21st centuries much more bearable in all sorts of ways. Electronics have most certainly taken over our lives.

Everywhere the little electrons are busy for the most part making our lives easier and more comfortable.

Medicine has made brilliant use of the technology from X-rays to scanners to monitoring patients and making possible such devices as heart pacemakers. And now we are on the threshold of robotic surgery that allows procedures to be carried out remotely.

Warehousing and stock control has become much more sophisticated and cost effective with the advent of RFID systems, not to mention the driverless forklifts that can find a stock item among thousands in far less time than a man in a brown coat.

Industry has benefited with tools such as laser cutters that bring previously untold accuracy to some machining tasks. Computer-controlled machines make slide rules and calipers almost redundant.

At home there is the car at whose heart is a computer, while the kitchen fairly bristles with electronics from the oven to the microwave, to the scales, coffee machine, food processor and the toaster that senses the approach of black toast. Elsewhere in the home is the television, linked to a PVR, and an ambitious hi-fi system, complete with half a dozen remotes. Now, the most active exercise is scrabbling among the cushions for the elusive remote.

Then we have the marvels of the desktop or portable computer and its wireless link to the outside world through the internet. In fact, the list of friendly electronics goes on and on.

But are all sort of electronics necessarily good for us? Is it a coincidence that with the widespread adoption of electronic gadgetry, the number of overweight and obese people has climbed almost vertically? Electronics have taken away the exercise we did not know we were taking. We no longer need to leap up when we think the toast is burning. We no longer have to shuffle across the room to change the television channel or set up the PVR. We no longer have to beat the washing on a wash board of corrugated aluminium. And we no longer have to beat the living daylights out of a pudding in the kitchen with a fork or whisk.

We no longer have to crank the car, which was always a good source of exercise depending on the car. Lifts and escalators have taken over from staircases that are now largely ornamental and serve only as an emergency escape route in case of fire. Not many people are to be seen leaping stairs two at a time to reach an upper level.

Instead we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on subscribing to the plethora of gyms and keep-fit establishments that have sprung up like a fungus in a damp sneaker. There is scarcely a high street in the land that does not sport a large window through which lycra-clad males and females, mounted on expensive machinery, can be seen intently pedalling, rowing or running the excess weight away.

Now, I’m not suggesting for one moment that physically changing the TV channels and turning the washing machine into a potted palm holder is the answer to our overweight problem. What I am suggesting is that we have taken on a mindset where electronics and all their conveniences are our first line of thought and that anything physical has become an anathema when the electrons can do the work.

And if you link this with the excessive food many of us consume, then it is not surprising that the tubbies are taking over the world, in spite of the gyms.

Sluggish we may have become, but the pudgy hands still reach out for the second helping and then part with money to slim it down.

We can’t entirely blame electronics, but we should perhaps learn to harness the excesses.

Image caption: © iStock/Robinpd