Obesity Argumentative Analysis

In the United States, obesity has become a serious problem. Seventy-eight million adults and thirteen million children in the nation suffer from the consequences of obesity (American Heart Association, 2016). As Mike Rounds stated: “Being overweight and obesity are major risk factors for many chronic diseases for people of all ages. When people are overweight or obese, they have more health problems and more serious health problems, in addition to higher health care costs”. In adults, obesity is linked to increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and other chronic conditions. In children, obesity is linked to type 2 diabetes, elevated blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, liver disease, respiratory

For this reasons, finding a cause and a possible solution for obesity is of critical importance. Obesity is complex and is the result of many factors—personal choices, the environment, metabolism, and the genes. However, since obesity is increasing over the time, people are starting to question: Who is to blame? Is the environment causing this increase? Are the personal choices? With much speculation, this topic has become a very intriguing argument. What people must understand is that changes in our environment make it hard to engage in healthy behaviors. The accessibility to junk food, affordability to fast food restaurants, and food marketing make it hard to resist the push of the environment towards obesity. This essay is going to summarize the counterclaims that state that obesity is a personal choice, support where responsibility lies with respect to the idea that obesity is socially contagious, and mention current government actions to the obesity

The accessibility and affordability to fast food restaurants, the lack of access to supermarkets, food marketing, and lack of nutrition education are factors from the environment that contribute to the recently obesity epidemic. Between 2000 and 2005 the number of people with a body mass index of more than 50 increased by 75% (Cohen, 2008). Interesting, there wasn’t any change in people’s physiology that could explain this increase (2008). In effect, there weren’t any mutations or metabolic changes in people during that short period. In that case, it seems that the causal factors of obesity originate from the environment (2008). The accessibility to fast food restaurants is an environmental factor that contributes to the obesity epidemic in the United States. Per the documentary, “Super-Size Me”, there is a McDonald almost everywhere in the nation. In fact, a study found that among “9th grade children, a fast food restaurant within a tenth of a mile of a school is associated with at least a 5.2 percent increase in obesity rates” (Currie, Dellavigna, Moretti, & Pathania, 2009). Also, the documentary also mentioned that the price of a salad is more expensive than the price of a hamburger. With just a few more cents, people were switching from a regular meal to a super-size meals that contained many calories. People are getting full and satisfied with less money and this is increasing their chances to