Obesity In America

Obesity is growing vast in America because almost three quarters of Americans are obese. The numbers have continually grown when the start of “fast food” became faster and less expensive. Our food has evolved so much over the years by using generally modified organisms (GMO), Tran’s fat, lard, and fake ingredients. Obesity has become a wide-spread epidemic in America and therefore has killed Americans, made many others disabled, caused many different heart problems, and diabetes. Obesity is bad and needs to be controlled throughout the United States. Obesity is self-treatable and self-diagnosed. Being obese is when someone eats more calories they burn. Being between twenty and twenty nine percent body mass index is considered overweight,
and if thirty percent a person is obese. So a woman who is five feet four inches and weighs one hundred and fifty pounds has a body mass index of twenty five and considered overweight. If a woman is five feet four inches and two hundred pounds that is a body mass index of thirty four and considered obese. America has been shocked by some of these results but they are true and accurate measurements. We as Americans need to have control on our weight and eating habits more than over the last ten years.
Obesity is based on a common form doctors use called body mass index (bmi).
The body mass is determined by the actual weight of the patient in kilograms and then divided by the height in meters squared. According to USA Today,
“In 2012, 34.9% of the people in this country were obese, which is roughly 35 pounds overweight. That is not significantly different from 35.7% who were obese in 2010(…) in both 2010 and 2012 78 million adults were obese (paragraph 2).” Back in the forties to the sixties there wasn’t much obesity because food was real and made from scratch. McDonalds first started its hamburger business in 1940, when it wasn’t full of calories and fatty foods. Today people see that a burger with three patties is cheaper than a salad so with the income of people being below normal everyone will buy the cheapest item. McDonalds has a dollar menu and I feel that hurt Americans thinking that it’s fast and addicting. Not only do people buy one it’s so cheap so instead they buy two or three. McDonalds even enticed kids by putting toys in a kid’s meal. McDonalds is the worst fast food company out there and continues to reel in adolescents to gain money and
fame. Diseases caused by obesity are killing Americans all because of our food today and the amount we intake.
High blood pressure is always a cause of being overweight. Loosing just eight pounds could change blood pressure to average, but with Americans there are so many tempting and a vast amount of different foods in America. But McDonalds isn’t the only corporation with a dollar menu or cheap food. McDonald’s has competitors and they’re always competing to have the cheapest food. Such as Burger King with a dollar and a quarter chicken nuggets while McDonalds is five dollars for twenty. These corporations are competing for our money and with o care in the world of what it does to our body’s long
term. When having a family with parents who are obese, the children along with them will be obese. What the parents eat is the example of their parents. Obesity within adolescent’s has risen over the years because playing outside is no longer a must. Parents give in to the video games and technology that children are no longer wanted to go outside and run or play sports. Technology has evolved over the years and brought all the kids in and now sports and exercise is no more. Well with what children eat and how lunches are at school most are to be obese. With children starting their life out with those habits will be hard to let go and to lose weight. It can be done, but with only will power to give up todays “fast food”. Another cause of being obese is diabetes. Diabetes is caused by the added pressure on their body from being overweight and an inability to produce insulin to control blood sugar levels.
“Obesity takes a huge toll on people's health. It contributes to a long list of serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, liver problems, degenerative joint disease, and some types of cancer” (USAToday paragraph 11).
It’s not easy to take insulin and be overweight at the same time. It’s almost a medical circle when you get diabetes 2 by being overweight, because when taking what you need for the diabetes the insulin adds more glucose which is stored as fatty cells and makes you gain more weight. While on insulin it would be even harder to lose weight and takes a lot of will power to get out of. As well, a modified diet is a must when on insulin to control the expected weight gain. Doctors haven’t found a source to help the weight gain but it’s making it a decisive epidemic people are trying so hard to get out of. Heart problems are very common when being obese and are called a cardiovascular disease.
“Cardiovascular disease is generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to a heart attack, chest pain, or stroke(…) Other heart conditions, such as those that affect your hearts muscle, valves or rhythm” (Mayo Clinic).
This disease effects the functioning of a person’s heart functions and major blood vessels. Being overweight literally adds too much weight to the heart and doesn’t allow it to pump blood throughout a body like it should. If obese and have cardiovascular disease it outreaches to many other things such as a stroke. When a person is too obese to where a heart can’t send blood out it causes damage in the brain from an interruption of blood. Obesity is growing vast in America because almost three quarters of Americans are obese. The numbers have continually grown when the start of “fast food” became faster and less expensive. Our food has and is evolving so much by using generally modified organisms (GMO), Tran’s fat, lard, and fake ingredients. Obesity has become a wide-spread epidemic in America and therefore has killed Americans, made many others disabled, caused many different heart problems, and diabetes. As Americans diets and a source of burning calories would stop much of this. Obesity is bad and needs to be controlled throughout the United States.