Diem 1
Gavin Diem
Professor Chris Paquette
English 1A
April 3, 2016
Why Do People Care if They Are Overweight or Not?
Obesity has been forever altering our society. People are being approached by their physiques. This is making a negative impact on climate change. Ultimately, people want to have the ideal body. In order to do this, they need to tweak their behaviors in order to change society for the better. This complication can be altered and justice can be done. In the article “Why Bother?” by Michael Pollan, he discusses how people are in an environmental crisis. A justification or explanation to this change is due to the facts behind the types off physiques. People are realizing that there are opposing challenges
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to overcome when being overweight. Pollan wants people to live healthful lives. Being overweight not only makes people feel indisposed about themselves, but it also modifies the way they use their kinetic energy in life. Thus, would be another factor for humans changing society. Addressing the complications of obesity would be a substantial start. It ultimately won’t just resolve the problem. More needs to be concluded to help perfect our adapting society. The reason behind obesity is solely due to the unchallenging environment when obtaining food from the fast food chains throughout the world. I have learned an immense amount of valuable information from reading the article, “Cruelty, Civility and Other Weighty Matters,” by Ann Marie Paulin. Before reading this narrative, I was oblivious to the problem amongst weight. I never have the Diem 2 impression that it really affected society until reading both articles.
Pollan claims, “Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do, to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce you sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind”(767). Larger humans place a larger footprint. Both articles helped refresh my awareness of this problem and how it affects people. I was pondering about this issue and realized there is a prodigious factor to this epidemic. I realized people that consume fast food on a daily basis tend to be larger human beings. Fast food is detrimental to ones health and can be high ranking in calories. I would consider factors such as these to be a top answer in the obesity epidemic. With the expanding food industry around the world occurring, it also comes to expanding fast food chains. It’s almost impossible to give in and consume these easy routes in life. People want to consume food quickly and cheaply. The author Pollan would ask the question, why bother with this problem? They do this because they don’t have enough time in their day to make food themselves. In Ann Marie Pauline’s text, “Cruelty, Civility, and Other Weighty Matters,” she discusses how people overweight are approached unreasonable. People are treated divergently amongst society as a whole. Ann Marie Paulin claims that obese people are seen as “lazy, stupid, ugly, lacking in self-esteem and pride, devoid of self-control”(203). People that are normal weight are treated reasonably. This process can be
changed. People in general have caused this issue to society. Life is based off of how humans react to their surroundings. You can choose the hard way, or the easy way. Diem 3 For example, I can go buy Panda Express really easily. It tastes good, it’s cheap, and it’s quick. I also have a choice to go make food at my house. It will take me much longer to go buy dinner at the grocery store and then go home to cook it. The food will cost more at my house. People are unaware of these issues. Author’s Paulin and Pollan want to make the situation more aware to the public. They want to show that there are always good choices. Ann Paulin states that, “most diets don’t work”. (244) Some people think that food is completely unrelated to being overweight or not. That’s how people become increasingly overweight in their lifetimes. They don’t realize the situation to the full extent. The situation becomes too hard to reverse over time. They become oblivious and think it’s hereditary eventually. I have cousins that did change their diets and lose weight. But, they made the decision to do that. They chose to eat healthier and they benefited from it by losing some pounds overtime. It all depends on the human in general. People can see facts and either benefit from them or choose to forget about them. The solution lies within the people themselves. People need to start being aware of the negative factors. There are healthier choices in this world. For example, just eat healthier food items. There are thousands of different options in this world. It might cost a little more money, but it will save you in the long run. Health issues are much more expensive than not having any. People can simply see what the problem is and adapt to the situation. The author Ann Paulin, starts out claiming, “I swear, if I have to sit through one more ad proclaiming that life is not worth living if you aren’t thin, I’ll slug somebody”. (243) People get so much negative feed back that they simply don’t care Diem 4 anymore. For example, I had a neighbor that was overweight and it affected his lifestyle for a long time. People constantly looked at him strangely. I would go to the store with him and see people giving him bad looks. As much as he hated it, he started to become immune to peoples’ views. Another example would be that I have a grandma that is overweight. She hates talking about her health problems. She eats what she wants and you can’t tell her otherwise. She has had no improvements to her lifestyle. People can choose whether they want to input effort or not. I know it’s not easy to lose weight, but life in general is not easy. If you can go through college, you can lose weight! Life is too short. People should be taking life for granted. It’s important that people start realizing that fast food is not good for you. Overall, a skinnier physique is more ideal for today’s society. The tides have changed because of peoples’ concerns for health these days. Perhaps society should consider this complication and use it to their advantage. These aspects that I talked about in my previous paragraphs help establish this complication. I hope I made this issue more aware to the readers. It’s affecting a large population of people and it needs to be addressed. I want people to be living healthier and happier lives overtime. Humans can have an impact on climate change, for the better. Works Cited Page: Pollan, Michael. “Why Bother?” New York Times Magazine 20 Apr 2008: 19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print. Cruelty, Civility and Other Weighty Matters, by Ann Marie Paulin from the book The Composition of Everyday Life No date, period or location.
When people consume supersized fast food meals, is the food to blame when they themselves become supersized? Morgan Spurlock takes on the challenge of eating only McDonald's every day, three times a day, for thirty days straight to see how these meals affect the physique and general health of the human body. The Film Supersize Me uses logos, pathos, and ethos to effectively persuade the audience that eating fast foods, namely McDonald's, has horrible side effects. McDonald's is one of the most popular fast food restaurants across the country with some of the most sugar and calorie packed foods. In America, that spells trouble since the smaller sized items tend to be the largest sizes in other countries across the globe.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell looks at a number of social epidemics and analyzes their build up to the point where they tip. “Tipping” is that point where an epidemic booms, or grows, to its maximum potential. Gladwell begins defining “tipping” with a literal example of the famous shoes, Hush Puppies. Once considered old-fashioned, Hush Puppies experienced a social boom in the mid-90s when hipsters in New York made them trendy again. Gladwell continues explaining “tipping” with a medical epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Gladwell introduces us to three essential rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few says a key factor in epidemics is the role of the messenger: it spreads through word-of-mouth transmission. Gladwell explains this theory with an example of how Paul Revere managed to spread the news of British invasion overnight. Gladwell continues to explain that there are several types of people that create these types of epidemics. They are called Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Connectors are those people that are very social and can literally connect with people with as little as two degrees of separation. Mavens are those that know a lot about a lot of different things. They may recommend a certain restaurant and you must go because you know what they told you about it is true. And Salesmen are exactly that: people that are easily social and persuading.
In Michael Pollan’s “Why Bother?” Pollan argues that each person can contribute to helping to the environment by erasing their carbon footprints. In my everyday life I experience the choice of driving my car to work or riding my bike. More often than not I choose to drive my car because it is the easier option. I, along with many other people, believe that my individual impact will not cause a larger impact on the global scale. In Pollan’s essay, he makes each person think about the effect they are leaving on the environment and how each person, as an individual, can change his ways before it is too late. Wendell Berry, a naturalist and well-respected and influential writer, was a key factor in recognition of the environmental crisis and how to solve the problem.
American health, specifically our obesity epidemic, has grown into a trending media topic. A quick Google search will bring up thousands of results containing a multitude of opinions and suggested solutions to our nation’s weight gain, authored by anyone ranging from expert food scientists to common, concerned citizens. Amongst the sea of public opinion on obesity, you can find two articles: Escape from the Western Diet by Michael Pollan and The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food by Michael Moss. Each article presents a different view on where the blame lies in this public health crisis and what we should do to amend the issue. Pollan’s attempt to provide an explanation pales in comparison to Moss’s reasonable discussion and viable
Obesity is very common in America, around 66% of American adults are overweight and nearly 33% are obese, which leads to heart disease, cancer, stroke and many other illness. Furthermore, the consume of fast food is in my opinion one of the worst decisions we can make, the food may be cheaper but it leads directly to overweight problems, and it not only damages our bodies but they undermine local business, farmers, and in the process they support they massive slaughter of animals. Ms. Lappe states “…modern livestock production has steered away toward the industrial-style production to highly destructive overgrazing “(858).By consuming food from fast food industries we support the destruction of lands, and the poor conditions in which the animals we consume are suffering. Moreover, changing from consuming fast food to healthier food is in my opinion a transition every individual should make since we cannot keep supporting the companies that literally destroy our world and our body with our
This documentary shows great examples of how obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic as important as terrorism, according to Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. He stated, “Obesity is a terror within us. It destroys our society from within.” If we don’t take responsibility and change our horrible eating patterns we are going to be doomed. One of the main reasons for obesity, other than the lack of a healthy diet, is the modernization of our world.
It is natural for a society to be concerned for the future generations. With the rate of obesity growing in adults and children, many begin to see it as an issue that needs to be addressed. New reports show “ childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years” (cdc.gov). Overweight and obese are not actually the same. Overweight is defined as “having excess body weight for a particular height from fat,” and obesity is defined as “having excess body fat” (cdc.gov). With obesity comes the chance for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Both can be
Obesity is a serious epidemic that majority of Americans face. The dangerous of obesity should not be taken lightly and addressed admittedly. However, the big question is how or why do some individuals stay skinny or become fat. The movie Weight of The Nations, Part 2: choice helps us explore this unanswered question to give us a better understanding of how this problem has gotten so out of control. This movie targets the obese society in America. This documentary uses scientist to research and address techniques to help people prevent weight gain and loss unhealthy weight. Most Americans want quick fixes to this problem, but have to realize big changes take time, but offer big results. Over all, the idea is to get people motivated by positive results to live a healthier live style.
Interest in the social aspects of obesity is nothing new. Jeffrey Sobal has written extensively about the social and psychological consequences of obesity , including the stigmatisation and discrimination of obese and even overweight individuals (Sobal 2004).
In order to take a sociological viewpoint into account when one examines obesity, first it is important to understand how obesity is recognized in current society. According to today’s news articles and magazines and advertisements and other mass media about health and healthy life, one can easily realize that a great number of people have an eagerness to be healthy. Also, one can assume through these mass media about health that everyone wants to be attractive, and they are even prone to transform their own behaviors to gain attractiveness. This is because most people live a life where social interaction is frequently required and must engage themselves into social interaction every day of their life. Therefore, based on these ideas and proofs throughout this mass media, obesity is regarded as one of the characteristics that is disgraceful and undesirable in society.
Obesity has become an epidemic in today’s society. Today around 50% of America is now considered to be over weight. Fast-food consumption has been a major contributor to the debate of the twenty-first century. Chapter thirteen, titled “Is Fast-Food the New Tobacco,” in the They Say I Say book, consists of authors discussing the debate of fast-food’s link to obesity. Authors debate the government’s effects on the fast-food industry, along with whether or not the fast-food industry is to blame for the rise in obesity throughout America. While some people blame the fast food industry for the rise in obesity, others believe it is a matter of personal responsibility to watch what someone eats and make sure they get the proper exercise.
In the text “It Always Costs”, author David Suzuki firmly defends his opinion on the detrimental effects of technology in today’s and age. Throughout his text, Suzuki continuously endorses the idea that technologies have far greater negative impacts than positive and are hardly worth the risk. He explains that these new technological innovations are assuredly unpredictable, reaching a point of somewhat unreliability. The author points out in his text that as humans, we do not have the capacities to foresee these fluctuations, for our knowledge in scientific innovation, is relatively limited. As such, he proposes that we, as citizens, must make a conscious effort to become more informed and aware of these new technologies sprouting in our
Brody, Jane E. “Attacking the Obesity Epidemic by First Figuring Out Its Cause.” New York Times. 12 September 2011. Print.
By taking a stand against the rise of obesity, America’s bodies will be in healthy condition, and are able to be the positive motivation for others to follow. Once more people choose to live a happy and healthful life, the decrease of obesity will begin to show. The solution to solving the issue of obesity in America can be possible by: eating healthier foods, getting proper exercise, and setting boundaries on what fast-food industries can sell to customers. People need to get up and get moving for the problem of obesity and its trail of nasty effects will consume the healthy way of life everyone knows today.
In today’s changing society and economy, more and more people are frequenting quick service restaurants, known as fast-food. With our country running 24/7 and everyone working different hours, there is less time for households or individuals to make a home cooked meal. There are time constraints on lunch breaks for the working individual. Since they don’t have time to pack a lunch before work, many will go pick up food from their local fast-food establishment. The current quick service industry is filled with high fats, high sugars, and the majority of foods being cooked with or deep fried in oil. The current condition of the food industry and the lack of people making better choices are increasing our country’s and other country’s obesity rates. Some blame the fast food restaurant claiming that they don’t provide enough healthy options; while others blame the consumers for not making better choices or lack of exercise. Is the current rise in obesity the fault of the consumer, or is the fault of the quick service industry?