Obesity Epidemic
Fast Food corporations are multi-trillion dollar companies. They produce advertisements all over the world and are willing to spend over $4.6 billion dollars a year in advertising alone. These companies want to illustrate how easy, convenient, and cheap, their food is, but nutrition is not their main concern. Fruits and vegetables on the other hand only produce about 116 million dollars in advertisements in a single year. Compared to fast food, the price of a hamburger is about a dollar, a carton of berries is about $5. Too many families living in poverty are only able to feed their families through the dollar menu and are not able to afford the fruits and vegetables needed to maintain a healthy diet. “obesity is a symptom of poverty. It 's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It 's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.” (Colicchio) These reasons help to possibly explain why there are 72 million obese people in the United States while only 9.5 million are considered healthy. This is setting the children up for failure to maintain a healthy lifestyle by enforcing an detrimental diet and exercise regime. The government needs to step up, but is unwilling to spend the extra …show more content…
In 1970 those commercials were banned, so why aren’t fast food advertisements banned? Childhood obesity can lead to health problems such as diabetes, early onset heart problems and heart attacks, types of cancer, and instability in mental health that leads to“Unhealthy weight control behaviors, e.g., fasting; skipping meals; eating very little food; vomiting; and using diet pills, laxatives, or diuretics, and have been found to co-occur with obesity.” (Finkelstein) Regulating what children see will put it out of mind reducing many of these health
Fast Food corporations are multi-trillion dollar companies. They produce advertisements all over the world and are willing to spend over $4.6 billion dollars a year in advertising alone. These companies want to illustrate how easy, convenient, and cheap, their food is, but nutrition is not their main concern. Fruits and vegetables on the other hand only produce about 116 million dollars in advertisements in a single year. Compared to fast food, the price of a hamburger is about a dollar, a carton of berries is about $5. Too many families living in poverty are only able to feed their families through the dollar menu and are not able to afford the fruits and vegetables needed to maintain a healthy diet. “obesity is a symptom of poverty. It 's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It 's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.” (Colicchio) These reasons help to possibly explain why there are 72 million obese people in the United States while only 9.5 million are considered healthy. This is setting the children up for failure to maintain a healthy lifestyle by enforcing an detrimental diet and exercise regime. The government needs to step up, but is unwilling to spend the extra …show more content…
In 1970 those commercials were banned, so why aren’t fast food advertisements banned? Childhood obesity can lead to health problems such as diabetes, early onset heart problems and heart attacks, types of cancer, and instability in mental health that leads to“Unhealthy weight control behaviors, e.g., fasting; skipping meals; eating very little food; vomiting; and using diet pills, laxatives, or diuretics, and have been found to co-occur with obesity.” (Finkelstein) Regulating what children see will put it out of mind reducing many of these health