Bruce Neal's Why Obesity Is A Health Problem

The environment we live in plays a huge role in our weight. The director of the food policy division at the George Institute for Global Health and professor of global medicine at the University of Sydney, Bruce Neal, states that, “Incredibly cheap, incredibly unhealthy food has been made available everywhere. If you bathe people in that sort of environment, they will become obese.” (Armitage 1). Just think about it. Waiting to board his plane, a person decides to go to the airport food court for a bite to eat. He would like a healthy meal, but it is so expensive compared to the fast food restaurant. He knows it is not the healthiest food choice, but he does not like to spend an arm and a leg for food. Because of this, he ends up choosing the …show more content…
For many of us – parents and children alike – daily life doesn’t involve a lot of physical activity and exercise” (2). We always have somewhere to be, but we never have enough time. Why not cut down our meal time? In order reduce our meal time, we must eat food that is able to be made quickly. Frequently, this food is not healthy. Along with unhealthy food being able to be made quickly, it is also irresistibly cheap. In the article Eating Healthy vs. Unhealthy, the author talks about a study that was performed in regards to the price of food. In this article it states, “The most comprehensive study of its kind indicates that yes, unhealthy food is about $1.50 cheaper per day, or about $550 per year, than healthy food” (“Eating Healthy vs. Unhealthy”). While five hundred fifty dollars a year may not seem like a lot for some people, it is a lot for many people. Obese people are usually not rich people. They are average individuals with an average amount of money who don’t want to spend a lot of money. Therefore, they choose the cheaper route especially with …show more content…
One way to do this would be to make healthy food affordable and available for everyone. Roland Sturm, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School states, “Rather, the main reason we 're getting fatter…is because we are surrounded by tasty temptations that cost very little, from fast food menus to processed snack foods” (Carroll 1). People eat unhealthy food because it is cheap and it is an easy snack. Providing healthy food at a cheaper price will greatly increase the likelihood of consumers substituting healthy food for junk food. Those who doubt this proposal may argue that it is not easy to make healthy food cheap because natural food is valuable and some of it must be imported from other areas around the world. While this may be true, making healthy food more affordable would benefit the country greatly. Along with healthy food not being affordable, many of the people who continuously eat unhealthy food may not know how bad it is for their bodies and for their