1. Introduction.- What does it mean to be obese? When people eat more calories than they burn off, their bodies store the extra calories as fat. 2. Obesity dramatically increased in the 70’s due to a number of factors. After World War 2, lawmakers, big business and labor leaders, along with many ordinary Americans put mass consumption at the center of their plans for a successful post-war nation. The availability of frozen dinners and a variety and surplus of different foods skyrocketed. In 1977, the US dietary guidelines changed drastically, promoting our diets as mainly carbohydrate based. Over the years, the sizes of certain foods and our portions have blown up. Twenty years ago, an average bagel was 3 inches in diameter and only 140 calories. Today, the size of the average bagel has doubled, now 6 inches in diameter and over 350 calories. The health problems that stem from being overweight go way beyond the ones we usually hear about, like diabetes and heart disease. Being overweight can also affect a person's joints, breathing, sleep, mood, and energy levels. In the U.S. 68.5% of adults are overweight or obese, 34.9% falling under the obese category and 31.8% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese with 16.9% being obese (Overweight and Obesity in the U.S.). Figuratively and literarily, the obesity rate is a growing problem. The total economic cost of overweight and obese persons in the United States and Canada caused by medical costs, excess mortality and disability is approximately $300 billion per year. $80 billion of this portion is due to overweight, and approximately $220 billion is due to obesity. Approximately 90 percent of the total $300 billon comes from the United States. The Trust for America's Healt... ... middle of paper ... ...ical nutritional changes to the NSLP would also need to be made. It’s simple; no more junk food served or allowed to be bought during school lunches. If these proposals where to be carried out and enforced by the government, the $300 billion spent on over weight and obese individuals per year could be virtually eliminated. Some lawmakers argue that to limit what Americans are allowed to buy violates their rights. This is simply not true. The changes would only limit what could be bought within the government programs. If the participants of the SNAP program would like to buy foods deemed “unhealthy”, they are completely allowed to do so with their own personal income, just not with taxpayer dollars. The same goes for the NSLP program, if the individual wants to consume unhealthy foods, those foods can be bought outside of school and brought by the individual child.
A national epidemic is occurring, the war between food and people. In the United States, about “32% of children (from 2 to 19 years old) are obese” (Bernadac 1). As the years continue to go on the rate of obese children are increasing as well. In the past the problem did not have much consideration due to a low rate of affected children. Now families are suffering the long-term consequences of having an obese child. Some of those health effects are “Heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer and osteoarthritis” (CDC 1). A problem with this type of drastic effects may have a solution; method prevention for the future generations and correct treatment for those who are already obese can lower the rate.
Today, 78.1 million American adults and 12.5 million children are obese. Obesity in America is a unstoppable epidemic. Since the 1960s, the number of obese adults have doubled and the number of obese children have tripled. Because of America’s obesity problems, Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report saying; "The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight," said that obesity "have reached epidemic proportions" in America. Obesity in America has no doubt reached epidemic proportions. Since 2001, America has been the most obese country in the world. This essay discusses what obesity is and how it is affecting today’s America by answers the following questions:
What is obesity? Obesity is excess of tissue. There are many different methods determining excess of fat. The most common one is body BMI or Body Mass Index. The excess fat increases fatty acids and inflammation. All this can lead to type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a disease that affects many Americans. According to the article “ Genes Do Play a Role in Obesity” the interaction between obesity related genes and
According to the USDA, at the start of century 21st American people have increased their daily caloric intake by consuming five hundred calories more than in 1970. As cited by Whitney & Rolfes (2011), there are many recognized causes of obesity such as genetics, environment, culture, socioeconomic, and metabolism among others; but the cause most evident is that food intake is higher than the calories burned in physical activity. Excess of energy from food is stored in the body as fat causing an increase of weight. During the course of the last 40 years, obesity has grown enormously in the United States and the rates remain on the rise (pgs. 272-273).
Did you know that the United States is currently the fattest country? How is this even possible? Not only is it the adults that are gaining great amount of weight, it is that one in five children are considered obese. Why is there many children in the United States that have somewhat of large round physiques? Parents and guardians always want to do best for their children, but sometimes feeding them too much processed food will lead them to being overweight and obese. Being obese has no benefits at all. Obesity are known to increase blood pressure and can develop strokes and other problems linked to strokes, including high cholesterol, high-blood sugar, and heart failure. Even though some parents believe that even though their children are
“Many different kinds of people, like unemployed, part-time workers, the elderly, people who need public assistance, disabled people, or people with law incomes may be eligible for food stamps. ”(blue). Food stamps have created a great impact on many people’s lives, and if the government would open the coverage of food stamps to all foods, the people who are using them may get the right food in their diets. By putting a limit on the types of food people buy with food stamps, the citizens using the food stamps are pretty much letting the government decide what the buyers can and can not
The obesity rate need to stop, and it have to start off the bombardment of advertising the fat and junk food that we don’t need. About “$1.5 billion a year,” (Brody) from state of California that amount of spends on unhealthy from people that had consumed. As for health concern that many people that eat up tons of carbohydrate that makes young people and adults having a Type 2 Diabetes. “Children’s physical well-being not to the continued spread of youth obesity,” (Brody) which the U.S. need to invest their time to keep people having Type 2 Diabetes in their young age. As this can also translate to school.
Do you remember your favorite “School Lunch”? I do, I essentially had two favorites; pizza and hamburgers with fries. Think back, wasn’t there at least one school lunch that the lunch ladies made that everyone was so excited to eat. Kids that habitually brought their super hero lunch box with thermos would leave it at home and be in line for pizza or burgers and fries. We could also go back for “seconds”, it was the best meal of the week including what was served at home. The federal government has been involved in the NSLP (National School Lunch Program) since 1946 with the implementation of the National School Lunch Act. These initial programs developed the commodity distribution program for schools, institutions, needy households, summer
America is one of the most obese countries in the world, and the reasons are quite obvious. Take a look around. Fast food chains on every block, more and more technology to make our lives easier, and high amount of stress are just a few factors to weight gain in our country. There are many different views on obesity and how the people think it should be resolved, whether it's government making the change or the people taking care of themselves. Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years. Are we doing enough to bring these statistics down? No. In the last 40 years, there has been a growth to more than 160,000 fast food restaurants in America (“Adolescent and School Health”). Restaurants (such as Wendy's, McDonald's etc.) serve more than 50 million people per day, generating about 65 million in sales annually. Only since obesity has become a national epidemic have fast food restaurants changed their ways. But we need to do more than just change the kind of oil the french fries are fried in. Better yet, why don't we remove, or intensely decrease the number of the unhealthy fast food chains, and spread more healthy fast food chains, such as Subway? Is it something government could take act in? Should the United States government take measures to fight the rise of obesity in the country, or are choices concerning diet and nutrition better left to the individuals, free of government interference?
The government must have a say in our diets. Because the issues of obesity have already reached national scales, because the costs of obesity and related health issues have gone far beyond reasonable limits, and because fighting nutritional issues is impossible without fighting poverty and other social issues, the government should control the range and the amount of available foods. The cost of healthier foods should decrease. The access to harmful foods should be limited. In this way, the government will be able to initiate a major shift in nutritional behaviors and attitudes in society.
When promoting plus sizes and television shows, are self-esteem or heart disease also being promoted? People throughout the world struggle with being anorexic, bulimic, overweight, or obese. TLC’s now popular reality TV show, My 600 Pound Life, displays the daily struggles of morbidly obese people. While encouraging women to love their body is appealing, there are many dangers in the fondness of obesity. Glorifying obesity can lead to being morbidly unhealthy, as demonstrated by Dominique Lanoise, a woman who died from morbid obesity.
Many people around the world suffer from obesity. Obesity is a condition in which a body has so much fat that has a negative effect on health. Obesity occurs via many reasons such as eating a lot and less movement. It has many impacts and people do not realize them before they are activated or emerged. Obesity is a very big issue that our communities are suffering from as it causes many illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and strokes.
When one hears the word obesity thoughts that may come to mind are overweight, big, or even unhealthy. "Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of greater than 30" (Obesity).
Over the course of the last few decades, the U.S. has seen a drastic rise in the spread of obesity. Through the rise of large-scale fast food corporations, the blame has shifted toward the mass consumerism of these global industries. It is, however, due to poor lifestyle choices that the U.S. population has seen a significant increase in the percentage of people afflicted with obesity. In 1990 the percentage of obese people in the United States was approximated at around 15%. In 2010, however, it is said that “36 states had obesity rates of 25 percent or higher”(Millar). These rates have stayed consistent since 2003. The obesity problem in America is
Obesity, also referred to as being overly overweight, is a condition caused when one eats excessive amounts of food leading to storing more calories than one burns. These calories are stored as fats1. Obesity can develop from several causes and is usually influenced by genetics.