The Impact Of Wal-Mart On Childhood Obesity

Recently Wal-Mart has been congratulated on their commitment to reducing the sodium, sugar, and fat in their home brands, making their products healthier and thus working towards a reduction in childhood obesity. What this praise fails to acknowledge is the part that Wal-Mart has played in the past in encouraging childhood obesity. A study by Courtemanche and Carden (2011) found that an increase of Wal-Mart supercenters across North America had led to both an increase in BMI and obesity in those regions, with the most profound affect being on the low-income communities (Courtemarche & Carden, 2011).
For many years Wal-Mart has not only endorsed low quality and low cost junk food but has been criticized for its precarious employment practices, worker exploitation, and its anti-union stance (Mulder, 2011). Wal-Mart employees are often prevented from receiving employment practices that sustain a families needs such as, full time employment, comprehensive healthcare, a pension plan, sickness benefits and
This approach attempts to situate causal mechanisms on a personal level. Traditional health researchers would re-enforce the view that childhood obesity is often linked to factors such as excess stress, over-eating and a lack of physical exercise. The behavioural model and scientific finding would define the problem of obesity as “essentially the result of an energy imbalance driven by individual behaviour wherein energy intake exceeds energy expenditure over time” (Frood, Johnston, Matteson, & Finegood, 2013, p. 320). There are significant implications in dealing with the issue of childhood obesity under this framework. Under this framework, prevention and cure methods can be identified and put in place, but what this framework fails to consider are the social and political causes, impacting the