Obesity currently results in an estimated 400, 000 deaths a year in the United States and costs the national economy nearly $122.9 billion annually. After careful research, the observer does not see the U.S. ridding obesity by only making healthy foods cheaper, or advocating for stricter physical education policies in schools and communities, but instead it has to come from the society as a whole by having that mindset to crave a healthy lifestyle instead of just craving foods. One question that will be raised is “if the government will subsidize healthy foods?” Keywords: obesity, overweight, epidemic, subsidies, prevalence
Introduction Not only in the United States, but other regions of the world, the issue of obesity is a growing public health epidemic with many chronic risk factors involved. Some of these risk factors include: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancers, hypertension, arthritis, and hypercholesterolemia. From the various syndromes, “type I and II diabetes may be very closely related to obesity” (Carroll, Flegal, Brian, & Ogden, 2004, p. 493). An epidemic is defined as a communicable disease affecting concurrently large numbers of persons in a population. (Crowley, 2011, p. 96).