Argumentative Essay About Health Related Issues

Our contemporary world faces many types of health related issues that seems to escalate and worsen as years go by. One of these problems is the global obesity epidemic. Over the last 30 years, obesity rate has doubled in the countries with a Western lifestyle. Throughout the years, there have been many suggested causes for obesity or weight gain. Current lifestyles, such as overeating and lack of physical activities, are the most prominent ones. However, there is one possible cause that is sometimes overlooked. As health related issues increase, environmental problems escalate as well; this is due to the increase in usage of man-made or synthetic chemicals. According to the documentary “Programmed to be fat?” from CBC series, “The Nature of …show more content…
Synthetic chemicals target not only hormones, but also genes and how they are expressed. The study in this particular field is called epigenetics. In specific, epigenetics is “[t]he study of the chemical modification of specific genes or gene-associated proteins of an organism […] [that] can be inherited and are influenced by environmental factors” (Merriam-Webster Online). To simply define, epigenetics explains how similar genes in various people can be expressed in diverse ways. In the documentary, epigenetics was used in a study to learn the effects the chemicals have on human development. This is very important in understanding how infants nowadays are being born overweight or obese. During this study, it is suggested that these man-made chemicals might be initiating a change in the genes to express themselves in an altered way, especially during the development of a foetus, that leads to a ‘programmed’ or set life of being and becoming fat. This alteration in the gene can last and “carry on generations after generations” (Slinger & Mohun, 2012). As these differently expressed genes, programmed for weight gain or obesity, get passed down to an offspring, the infant enters the world with increased