Obesity In Sparta Essay

Obesity is defined in Merriam-Webster as a condition characterized by the excessive accumulation and storage of fat in the body. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines obesity by a BMI (Body Mass Index) calculator, if your BMI is over 30 you are obese. Nothing is taken into consideration but your height and weight and the calculator provided by the CDC does not distinguish between men and women. More than 1/3 of adult Americans are over-weight or obese according to the CDC, and the same for children. With all of those definitions and stats stated, the Spartans would consider us a slovenly, undisciplined society that lacks character or duty and devotion to state. Why the Spartans would consider us with such disdain is because they were disciplined to a fault, and there sense of duty and devotion to the state was ingrained from birth. Sparta was established to be a social system focused on military training and the pursuit of excellence in body and mind. Training and education for males began when you reached the age of seven when they would enter the Agoge system. The Agoge system is when a boy would leave his family and to live in a barrack with other boys to be trained in the Spartan way of life. During this training the boys were given only one set of clothes to wear for an …show more content…
S. have less physical activity and this only decreases with age. Government guidelines suggest that children have 60 minutes if moderate to vigorous physical activity a day. The key to that is that it is only a suggestion, as is the food pyramid. Americans do not live in a society where physical activity or food consumption is regulated by the State as it was in Sparta. This makes food consumption and physical activity a personal choice for Americans; this was not the case in Sparta. Xenophone and Plutarch wrote about Lycurgus and the laws that he created for Sparta that made Spartans the superior society that it