Mayo Clinic Obesity

The Mayo Clinic describes obesity as a “complex disorder involving an excessive amount of body fat”. Even though most people think that obesity is solely a cosmetic issue, the major issues that it causes are anything but superficial. Obesity kills approximately 300,000 people per year and by 2030 it is predicted that half of Americans will be overweight or obese. Along with the 35% of Americans who die from obesity each year, 15% of them are male and 20% of them are female. Obesity can increase your chances of developing heart disease, getting diagnosed with cancer or even having a stroke. With all of the risks laid out on the table, the question to be answered is should the government make regulations on the food we eat because of an epidemic …show more content…
Since 1980, the obesity rate for children 6 to 11 years old has risen from 7% to 18% in 2012. As for adolescents ages 12 to 19 years old, obesity rates have risen from 5% to 21% in 2012 as well. 1 in 4 children suffer from obesity in the United States and kids who live in poor cities with a low income family are less likely to be provided with all three meals a day as well as fresh meat and produce. 23.5 million people don’t have access to a supermarket within a few miles from where they live which causes low income families to gravitate towards easier and cheaper options like fast food. Fast food chains like McDonalds and Wendy’s use toys to attract parents to buy kids meals for their children completely ignoring the fact that the food is highly processed and filled with empty calories. Parents have extremely time consuming lives and fast food makes it that much easier to fulfill one more thing they have to do for the day, making dinner for their children. Because obesity has become an epidemic and the spread of awareness of the dangers of overly processed food has increased, major fast food places have changed the way they makeup their kids’ meals and other menu items. For example, McDonalds has made apple slices a permanent addition to the Happy meal trademark and decreased the number of calories in the meal by 20%. Not only is the meal healthier because of the less calories being consumed, but …show more content…
This being said I don’t think that any food that is deemed unhealthy should completely be obliterated from the fast food industry, but I do think that children need to learn from their parents or teachers how to consume food and proportion it into healthy servings. Getting to be a child means to dress up on Halloween and eat candy as well as eating cake on their birthday, so entirely getting rid of sweets and anything bad nutrition wise is absurd. If children grow up learning at an early age that we ‘eat to live and not live to eat’ then the obesity rate would be decreased to a lower percentage than it is currently at