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Proposals to help with obesity
Essay on diet determinant of health
Proposals to help with obesity
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Because the government choices not to closely regulate the food citizens of the United States of America, people are making poor eating decisions, leaving sixty-seven percent of Americans either overweight or obese [2005-2006}. (Is Obesity a Disease?) But what if it wasn’t really obese people’s fault for being overweight, but instead the fault of food companies that provide cheaply priced and processed food that is full of perseverates, trans fats, and salt? Scientist and author of “A Big Fat Crisis”, Debora A. Cohen writes about people’s obesity problem, “We are hard – wired to enjoy eating, which stands to reason from an evolutionary point of view. If we didn’t have the drive to obtain food coupled with the pleasure of eating it, the human species would not survive.”(Calhan) If people have no option but to purchase food intoxicated with trans fats, then it is the governments job to protect its citizens from further harm. Therefore government should closely monitor processed and fast foods to protect people from unhealthy food choices, better inform the public about nutritional information, and closely regulate American food consumption to reduce obesity related health risk.
High levels of trans fat, sugar, and salt have become prominent in many processed and fast foods, causing Americans to become addicted to these unhealthy preserving additives. In many school settings, students only have access to junk food when searching for something to eat in either the cafeteria or school vending machines. Many high school students consume three hundred and thirty-six calories a day purely on school vending machine snacks. (Koebler) Possible solutions to the growing childhood obesity problem are to provide healthier options, such as fruit...
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...heir bodies with clean, leafy, natural foods and exercised, obesity could become a thing of the past. With strict government imposed restrictions banning trans fats and limiting salt, it would help enable people, particularly in poorer communities, to lose weight.
Works Cited
Anderson, Arnold, and Mary Jean Bowman. “Methods of Controlling Food Consumption.” Nutrition and Food Supply. January 1943. 128. JSTOR. Web. 25 March 2014.
Bakst, Daren. “Government Control of Your Diet: Threats to ‘Freedom to Eat.’” The Heritage Foundation. n.p September 3, 2013. Web. 26 March 2014.
Cahalan, Susannah. “Why gov’t should regulate food like tobacco & alcohol.” New York Post. n.p December 28, 2013. Web. 27 March 2014.
Filipovic, Jill. “To Save Americans’ Health, Government Must Intervene In Food Industry.” Aljazeera America. n.p November 17, 2013. Web. 27 March 2014.
Bittman, Mark. “Bad Food? Tax it, and Subsidize Vegetables.” New York Times. 23 July 20ll. Print.
In the article “What You Eat Is Your Business”, the author claims, Americans need to be more responsible for their own health and the government should not become involved (Balko). I argue this point; the American people have been tempted into buying foods that are unhealthy, cheap, and convenient, and we cannot be responsible when foods like this are so easy and available to purchase. We are also one of the fattest nations in the world. He conveys in the article that we should have some sort of responsibility for what we put into our own body (Balko), but I feel that with all of the tempting foods being right at our fingertips, we are getting fatter and fatter. When we turn on the television at night, and every fifteen minutes a food commercial comes on. When we go to school, there are vending machines in every building. Nobody offers water anymore with our meals; it costs extra just to get a cup for water with a meal.
American health, specifically our obesity epidemic, has grown into a trending media topic. A quick Google search will bring up thousands of results containing a multitude of opinions and suggested solutions to our nation’s weight gain, authored by anyone ranging from expert food scientists to common, concerned citizens. Amongst the sea of public opinion on obesity, you can find two articles: Escape from the Western Diet by Michael Pollan and The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food by Michael Moss. Each article presents a different view on where the blame lies in this public health crisis and what we should do to amend the issue. Pollan’s attempt to provide an explanation pales in comparison to Moss’s reasonable discussion and viable
Regulating what the government should control and what they should not was one of the main arguments our founding fathers had to deal with when creating our nation, and to this day this regulation is one of the biggest issues in society. Yet, I doubt our founding fathers thought about the idea that the food industry could one day somewhat control our government, which is what we are now facing. Marion Nestles’ arguments in the book Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health deal with how large food companies and government intertwine with one another. She uses many logical appeals and credible sources to make the audience understand the problem with this intermingling. In The Politics of Food author Geoffrey Cannon further discusses this fault but with more emotional appeals, by use of personal narratives. Together these writers make it dramatically understandable why this combination of the food industry and politics is such a lethal ordeal. However, in The Food Lobbyists, Harold D. Guither makes a different viewpoint on the food industry/government argument. In his text Guither speaks from a median unbiased standpoint, which allows the reader to determine his or her own opinions of the food industries impact on government, and vise versa.
Richard Balko and Mary Maxfield discuss personal responsibility, and choices in one’s health in their essays “What You Eat Is Your Business,” and “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” respectively. Balko feels the government should not intervene in people’s food intake because it is an individual preference. Instead, Balko asserts that the government should foster a program to assist the American people to take on personal responsibility and ownership of their own health. Similarly, Maxfield paints the same picture that our culture now finds it immoral to eat what our body needs, therefore believing in the idea of eating less is healthier. Maxfield points out the multi-billion dollar campaign of corporations into advertising false hope into consumers by buying into eradication of fatness. Why has food have suddenly become a risky subject at the dinner table? And who is to blame? Is it everyone else or do we blame ourselves?
In “Don’t Blame the Eater”, by David Zinczenko and in “What You Eat is Your Business”, by Radley Balko both authors discuss and make their stance’s clear on their believed cause of obesity in America. On one hand, Zinczenko argues that it is not the consumers fault for putting themselves at risk of becoming obese or being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but that it is the fast-food companies fault. While on the other hand, Balko argues that we as individuals hold responsibility on whether or not we are putting ourselves at risk for obesity.
Obesity has become an epidemic in today’s society. Today around 50% of America is now considered to be over weight. Fast-food consumption has been a major contributor to the debate of the twenty-first century. Chapter thirteen, titled “Is Fast-Food the New Tobacco,” in the They Say I Say book, consists of authors discussing the debate of fast-food’s link to obesity. Authors debate the government’s effects on the fast-food industry, along with whether or not the fast-food industry is to blame for the rise in obesity throughout America. While some people blame the fast food industry for the rise in obesity, others believe it is a matter of personal responsibility to watch what someone eats and make sure they get the proper exercise.
Radley Balko, The author of the essay “What You Eat is Your Business”, would agree that in order to stop obesity, we must turn this public problem around and make it everyone’s individual responsibility. Instead of inflicting the importance of personal ownership, government officials, politicians and congress make obesity a public problem by prohibiting junk food in school vending machines, federal funding for new bike trails and sidewalks, and restrictive food marketing to children. Overall I agree that this manipulation of food options is not the proper way to fight obesity, however, I think that government should inform people about the food they are eating because then they have no excuses for not taking responsibility of the actions.
, meaning to limit how much food you are eating, and to eat more vegetables than meats mostly. Saying that junk food can end obesity is a rather blunt statement due to
Bittman, Mark. "Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetable." New York Times 23 July 2011, late ed.: Sunday review 1. Print.
We live in the generation of the health revolution. Every time you turn around there’s a new gym being built. This year’s biggest “super food” is kale. Salads, smoothies, you name it. There are so many healthy options available to the public, but sometimes it seems that all these healthy choices go ignored. The so-called “obesity epidemic” is not due to what’s in the food. The issue is that we eat too much and exercise too little. In the last decade, there have been numerous reports claiming that one of the leading causes of high cholesterol and coronary heart disease is trans fat, which is made by hydrogenating vegetable oil. This process increases the shelf life and enhances the flavors of any product that contains it (Miller). These trans fats can be very harmful, but when consumed only on occasion are no worse than anything else. In fact, many fast foods don’t even contain trans fats. Many health activists claim that the only way to stop the rise of obesity, or rather the fall of health, is to ban trans fat. These activists fail to see that trans fat is not the problem. The problem lies within our nation’s apparent inability to choose our own well being over the convenience of high calories foods, regardless of whether or not they contain trans fats. We don’t need to take unnecessary government action to fix a problem that could be solved with a just a teaspoon of self control.
We make personal choices about what and where to eat. The government is not going to eliminate the unhealthy food because we think it is the cause of obesity. Ultimately, we must decide to either stay away from unhealthy food or eat them in moderation. Despite all the efforts of education, media and guidance it doesn’t prevent us from grabbing that cheeseburger with fries on the way to work. In his essay “What You Eat Is Your Business,” Radley Balko argues that society should take full responsi...
Amin et al. suggest that promoting children’s selection of whole fruits and vegetables as opposed to processed fruit and vegetables will reduce the amount of saturated fat, sugar, and sodium children are consuming. Amin et al. set up a study in which one school cafeteria had a self-serve salad bar, and the other school cafeteria had
National health, public safety, and worldwide wellbeing are being threatened by the current practices being used to produce the American food supply. Most Americans don’t know where their food comes from. Many are somewhat aware of the harmful practices surrounding the production of the food they consume, but are apathetic to deny a sense of personal responsibility. Among these questionable practices are the deregulation of genetically modified organisms, harmful additives, inhumane treatment of animals, and environmentally harmful agricultural practices. The for-profit, modern day model of “food efficiency” functions recklessly with
The fact is that in our country, any government intrusion looks undesirable. We are so used to making free choice and to having access to everything we need and want that we have already forgotten the value and usefulness of the government control. No, that does not mean that the government must control everything and everyone. What I mean here is that the government control should be balanced with the freedom of choice. Unfortunately, plentiful foods do not lead to improved health conditions. We cannot always make a relevant choice. Our hurried lifestyles make us extremely fast, and eating is not an exception. We eat fast, but fast does not always mean useful. I believe, and in this essay I argue that the government must have a say in our diets. Because there are so many obese people, because obesity is an expensive disease, and because very often it is due to poverty that people cannot afford healthy foods, the government must control the amount and the range of foods which we buy and eat. Healthy foods must become affordable. Poor populations must have access to high quality foods. The production of harmful foods should be limited. All these would be impossible if the government does not take active position against our diets.