Learning About Your Health:

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Recommended: Obesity and its problems and methods of prevention article

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.
For several years the FDA has required food manufacturers to label anything that contains more than .5 grams of trans fat as such (Assaf 328). Many restaurants have independently and voluntarily eliminated trans fats from their products without request from the government (Assaf 329). The HHS and USDA released as set of dietary guideli...

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... the facts quickly and provide them with a way to learn more if they wish. Again it is left to the choice of the public whether or not they wish to participate in learning about their health. If the government enforced eating in a certain manner and participating in health classes once a month, things start to seem a little to 1984.

Works Cited
Assaf, Raymen R., MA. "Overview of Local, State, and National Government Legislation Restricting Trans Fats." Clinical Therapuetics 36.3 (2014): 328-32. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Beato, Greg. “How Nutrition Destroys Your Free Will to Fatness.” Reason. Dec. 2006: 19.
Miller, Alan. “A Transitional Phase.” Spiked 27 Oct. 2006 11 27 April 2014
"Nutrition Choices." :: McDonalds.com. N.p., 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Tucker, Cynthia. “Broad-based Effort Needed to Attack Americans’ Obesity.” Portland Press
Herald 30 Dec. 2006: A9

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