Obesity+in+America+Essay

Obesity in America has been one of the leading causes of death in the world. A disease that 1 in 3 Americans will get, and it's only getting worse. In this essay, I will be explaining the causes of obesity and not only opinions from everyday parents, but also the food industries themselves. As we all know, obesity numbers have gone up significantly over the past few decades. The question is, why? In the article, "Not so Happy Meal", it states, "Parents are responsible for their childrens diet. And they certainly could do a better job: almost 17 percent of American children are obese, three times as many as in the 1970's." It also mentions that fact that the key to selling their products is their heavy advertising. Children spend hours watching television everyday, and during each break they're bound to see a fast food advertisement. reason obesity numbers have gone up is due to the amount of advertisements children see now versus the amount they saw in the 1970's. Another issue people face everyday is the amount of money it can cost to make a healthy meal for a family. "African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites, and more likely to be poor. As upper-middle class consumers increasingly seek out healthier foods, fast food chains are targeting low-income minority communities." Think about it, as upper of middle class children have better educations, they're more likely to stay away from fast foods and go for the expensive, healthy foods. Lower-class people don't know better, and even if they did it would almost be impossible for them to afford to eat healthy. "Calling these efforts elist renders the word meaningless. The wealthy will always eat well. It is the poor and working people who need a new, sustainable food system more than anyone else." Lastly, we look at America's current system of mass food production. Over the past few decades, our food system has changed more than ever. Farmers are actually getting paid half the amount of money they were paid in the 1970's because of the food industries way of making and distributing food. "America's current system of food production-overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monoculture, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies, and fossil fuels-is profoundly undemocratic." Our food industry will do whatever it can to get more money, and what they're doing is being ignorant about the fact that it's actually killing us. In my opinion, I agree with every single one of these articles. Our food system if out of control, fast food companies are going too far with they're marketing, and it isn't fair in any way that it costs more to eat healthier foods than it does to eat bad foods. I think that fast food companies are being ignorant and selfish, killing us shouldn't be the way they get there money. In conclusion, obesity is getting worse and worse every day. It shouldn't be so easy to get fast food. Instead, we should have easy access to healthy food. It's getting out of hand and people need to become more aware of what's going on around them.