Is Fast Food to Blame for Obesity?
Essay Preview: Is Fast Food to Blame for Obesity?
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There is no doubt that a well-known film entitled “Super-Size Me” reminds people to blame fast food for high rate of obesity. In this film, Morgan Spurlock, an American filmmaker, sacrificed himself to finish an examination about only eating McDonalds food for 30 days. After 30 days, his health became worse which was shown by gaining the weight, swinging the mood and losing of sex drive (Adams, 2005). It is believable that a lot of people in the world suffer from the similar experiences like Mr. Spurlock. There is an increasing number of individuals claims that fast food as the only reason causes obesity Based on this current trend, some fast food restaurants in several cities are enforced to post the caloric content of meals to earn customs trust back (Currie, DellaVigna, Moretti & Pathania 2010, p. 3)To be more subjective, fast food is not the only causal factor to cause obesity. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to prove this statement, and shows some factors like addition to TV, gender and heredity which contribute to obesity as well.
First of all, there is a definition about obesity. “Obesity describes individuals with excessively high levels of body fat or adipose tissue in relation to lean body mass” (Adams, 2005).The standards to define obesity between children and adults are different. “For example, adults with a BMI of 30 or greater are described as obese”. Adams also mentioned that waist circumference and waist-tophi (WHR) ratio to measure overweight and obesity” (Adams, 2005). It is known that the prevalent of obesity is popular all over the world especially in many richer countries like United States and the numbers of overweight increases rapidly in other poor countries (Adams, 2005). Obesity is like a nightmare for each person without any doubt. The reason is that obesity increase risk of other physical and psychological diseases such as hypertension and depression, which was reported by A report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (Currie, DellaVigna, Moretti & Pathania 2010, p. 16). It is hard to image that 3000,000 people die each year in America because of obesity. According to this statistic, many critics think that obesity is driven by fast food offered by restaurant like McDonald (Adams, 2005).
It can be illustrated that fast food as one of the most important factors resulted obesity. Firstly, fast food restaurants do not take their basic obligation to offer healthy food for consumers. To be more specific, many fast food restaurants describe their food as nutritious and healthy. However, the reality is those fast food contains too much sugar, fat and cholesterol, which increase the incidence of obesity (Adams, 2005). In the second place, many fast food businesses only focus on earning profit for shareholders instead of offering fresh and healthy food. They use some profitable business strategies to attract consumers attention. For instance, the fast food advertising and coupon encourage consumers to buy lager-size meal or try their new menu, which increase the harmful effect on peoples health (Adams, 2005).On the other hand, it is difficult for consumers to know the real information about fast food from advertising and coupons because they always magnify the benefits of their product and hide the weaknesses as well. Thirdly, fast food creates physical and psychological addiction, which means customers keep eating them (Currie, DellaVigna, Moretti & Pathania 2010, p. 15).As we all know, it is important for people to balance their daily diet. Those three main points demonstrate that keeping eating fast food can not satisfy consumers need for a healthy diet. Therefore, it is beneficial for consumers to avoid obesity by choosing healthy food.
Since people cultivate awareness about the harmful effects of fast food, they pay more attention to another unhealthy habit which is watching too much TV. It is truth that a large of number of individuals has a habit of eating while watching TV. “Eating while viewing TV may impair memory of food intake and promote over-consumption on a later meal (Dagenais, Filion, & Marquis, 2005).People gain weight easily under this situation, which is a prelude of obesity. A further report described that TV had a strong influence on children, and they spent most of their time on watching TV than other outdoor activities (Chang & Nayga, 2009). In the other words, viewing TV can be a critical factor contributing to obesity for children. The reason is that the addiction to watching TV results creates a sedentary habit which lack the time to do other activities. According to those evidences, people realize that viewing TV for long time is like a health killer for children. Thus, it is believe that the hours of watching TV can be another significant factor caused obesity (Chang & Nayga, 2009).
In an influential journal, Ronald Adams (2005) claimed that the factors causing overweight and obesity are diverse and complex. As important as food selection and healthy lifestyle, different genders are the third causal factor causing obesity. In the first place, there are some eating differences between females and males shown by five eating responses: number of bites, eating time, and eating rate, bite size and bite speed. More specifically, the results from two tables about the five eating responses for 142 obese and non-obese men and women eating doughnuts reported that women obviously took smaller and faster bites than men. In other words, women took a longer time to bite more than men (Hill & McCutcheon, 1984). Therefore, this eating style causes females a higher rank of hunger than males. Some people might support that the different body sizes between genders encourages men to eat more than women, but it is not truth. It has been reported that body size and gender for five eating responses are independent variables to affect the percentage to be obese. (J4 P9) More interestingly, pregnant women are always attracted by the temptation of food especially fast