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Obesity in America

In: Social Issues

Submitted By kmilleralert
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Research suggests obesity in America is an epidemic because of people’s diet, lifestyle, and genetic inheritance. Obesity is a chronic disease that can and will seriously affect one’s health. Health professionals agree that obesity has now reached epidemic status in our country. Over one third of American adults are obese. Obesity also affects children and is more prevalent now than in previous years. And the numbers are increasing.
Diet and nutrition play a major role in the United States epidemic of obesity. Although it is very complex especially when Americans are sent mixed messages on what to eat and how much they should eat. On one hand, you have packaged processed food, bigger portions and fast food meals that are marketed as all American. The food is delicious and filling but fast and cheap. On the other hand, Americans spend almost twenty billion dollars every year on the newest weight loss fads, from weight loss drugs to books on the newest weight loss diet to weight loss surgeries like gastric bypass, lap-bands and Hollywood’s favorite, liposuction. Everyone is looking for everything fast. Fast-food, and fast weight loss options. We spend more time at work to pay for all the fast stuff in our lives instead of spending time at home and in our own kitchens cooking nutritious meals for our whole family like our parents did fifty years ago. (Overeaters Anonymous, 1980)
This crazy relationship Americans have with food is easy to explain in terms of schemes in marketing. As years upon years of takeout pizza and caffeinated soda caught up with America the diet industry in the United States started growing bigger, smarter and faster about churning out that next biggest weight loss fad. Since the 1970s, weight loss fads and so called popular nutrition have been on a roller coaster of highs and lows. In the 1990s, fat was the biggest culprit. Low-fat and

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