Fast-Food Is Not The Cause Of Fast Food

Obesity is a massive issue Americans cannot seem to get under control. With fast-food restaurants at every corner, it can be quite difficult to make healthy choices. But is it really the restaurant’s fault that so many people are obese? When it comes down to it, it is ultimately the individual’s choice to eat unhealthy food. Even though fast-food restaurants are tempting, nobody is forcing anyone to eat there. If eaten in moderation, fast-food will not cause extreme obesity. The obesity issue can be fixed if everyone was aware of what they were eating. Fast-food restaurants advertise their products on every corner of the street. With all these tempting advertisements, it’s hard to resist those extra large fries that go straight to your thighs.

Whether people get their calories from a cheeseburger or a salad, it all depends on the amount of calories people consume per day. That doesn’t mean that fast food is good because there are still tons of chemicals and other ingredients that harm the body, but it doesn’t cause obesity. Limiting the amount of fast-food restaurants in an area won’t help decrease the amount of obese people. They will find the calories somewhere else if they can’t find it at a local McDonald’s. Shutting down fast-food restaurants would just leave people unemployed and hungry. They won’t eat differently just because a nearby McDonald’s has closed. What would make people eat differently is if they were educated on the amount of calories in their meal. If people knew that their meal was half a day 's worth of calories, they would most likely rethink their decisions. If restaurants want to improve the health of their customers, they should list the calories and make the portions smaller. Fast food places like McDonald 's have tons of unhealthy food items on their menu but as time goes on, more and more healthy things are added to the menu. Documentaries like "Super Size Me" shows what only eating unhealthy fast food does to people. Chris Coleson conducted an experiment doing the opposite. Coleson ate healthy food items at McDonald 's everyday and lost seventy seven pounds (Collins). People are eating too much and not getting the

Healthy food items on the menu might not be as healthy as one might think, but there are some healthy items compared to the rest of the menu. Some of the food on the menus are displayed as healthy but they really are not. According to Andrew F. Smith 's article "Healthy Fast Food", a Tendercrisp Garden Salad from Burger King has 670 calories, 45 grams of fat, and 1,740 mg of sodium. This exceeds the amount of sodium the average person should consume in one meal which is about 500 mg. In order to monitor how healthy food really is, it should be made at home to control what goes into