Obesity In Rural America

In recent years, several various news outlets have reported on the increase of obesity in the United States. While it is easy to point the finger at the rise of capitalism and the ease of access to calorically dense, nutritionally empty fast food, the one thing that is often overlooked is the lack of resources in rural areas. Not only are rural areas often overlooked in general, their lack of available healthcare and often “food desert” status leaves rural areas underrepresented in terms of health and fitness. The National Library of Medicine defines obesity in general as “[…] having too much body fat. […] that a person 's weight is greater than what 's considered healthy for his or her height” (omitted passages defining the difference between obesity and simply overweight), and this definition seems to be fairly simple to understand. There is, however, the use of the Body Mass Index scale, which …show more content…
Even in Kuna, which falls into that “too urban to be rural, to rural to be urban” category, had a ratio of 1 grocery store and 7 fast food or take out restaurants. And with Paul’s, the one grocery store, being obscenely overpriced, it was often cheaper to go get Chinese takeout. Even now, Kuna has two grocery stores, but now has 8 take out places— 9 if you include the Starbucks. In doing research on these topics— obesity in rural America, food deserts, etc— I had a difficult time finding facts that focused solely on the United States. Here in the United States, we like to act like things like lack of childhood nutrition and lack of food resources happen in those places to those people— I found a lot of articles about the lack of nutrition and resources in places like rural Canada and sub-saharan