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Childhood obesity and underlying health conditions
Childhood obesity is a serious medical condition that affects children and adolescents
Childhood obesity is a serious medical condition that affects children and adolescents
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Are your children getting all the right nutrition in their school lunches? Do they know what their lunch options are and whether or not they contribute to obesity? David Zinczenko in his essay, “Don’t Blame the Eater,” tries to persuade readers that consumers are obese because of the lack of food options, and how innutritious foods at fast food restaurants is harmful to the human body. He claims that when only unhealthy meals are available, there are many different health problems that result such as obesity and diabetes. While I both agree and disagree with Zinczenko that eaters aren’t to blame, I will assert that school lunches have an impact on childhood obesity (like fast food restaurants) and also how it is a young eater’s responsibility whether or not to eat the healthy nutritional foods.
Childhood obesity can be impacted by the nutritional values of school lunches. Most school age
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Christopher Magryta it asserts in his article about all the cases of the obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes cases in North Carolina, and also any other place in world. (Magryta, Christopher J., 352) Nutrition all starts at home and parents need to learn the right nutrition before they can teach their children about nutrition. As a reader many would agree with this because parents and home is where it all starts at and home is where everything is most influenced. Some of the leading cause of childhood obesity can start from poor eating, little activity, and, many other distractions involving not being active. Schools in this community of North Carolina and also many other places in the world explain how the schools are providing all junk food in their meals, “In our local schools, a daily choice of a pizza, hamburger, French fries, and other low-nutrient quality foods are being offered to our children.” (Magryta, Christopher J.,
“Don’t Blame the Eater” is an article by David Zinczenko that explains to Americans, specifically overweight young Americans, about the risks eating at fast food restaurants and its cause of affecting one’s health. In his article, he tries to address the issue about America’s food industries by using literal devices such as tone, logos, ethos, diction, and organization in order to spread his message. He begins his article by addressing the topic and as he continues writing, he supports his topic by writing about personal experience and moves onto the reasons why his topic in a serious issue. Although he shows an overall clear progress, he does tend to have a few problems with his writing that could be improved.
This documentary takes a look at how our school’s lunch programs and government play a role in the spread of obesity across the nation. The film really attempts to drive home the idea that our children are being immorally brainwashed into wanting unhealthy foods. At some points of the film, it appears that the director uses big companies and school lunches as a scapegoat for our nations crisis. It is a valid point that our nation’s children are being
Summary/Response Essay 1 In David Zinczenko’s article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” Zinczenko explains that during his childhood, which was in the mid 1980’s, his parents split up and he lived with his mom. Her income was barely enough to pay the bills, so they lived paycheck to paycheck. Under this circumstance, fast food was the only food that they could afford to buy in large quantities because it is generally cheaper than most other restaurants. Due to eating fast food for both lunch and dinner on a daily basis for his entire childhood, when he was 15 years old, Zinczenko weighed 212 pounds.
As the world strives for convenience and a fast-paced lifestyle, an epidemic of poor health is on the rise. With constant life struggles, fast food readily available, and little time for preparation, citizens of the United States are not paying attention to what they’re putting in their child’s mouths. The state of Mississippi has developed the highest percentages of childhood obesity in the United States. Although this percentage has decreased in recent years, the numbers are still astounding. The children of Mississippi are slowly being poisoned by their parent’s poor choices. Due to parent’s poor nutritional education and poor health habits, the children of Mississippi will continue on the destructive path of obesity
Obesity in the United States, which the media has labeled a national crisis, has also been connected to poverty rates. Big fast food industry’s target poor communities, and spend millions of dollars each year to create advertising that appeals to these specific areas. These industry’s also target naïve children when advertising because they know that eating habits developed in childhood are usually carried into adulthood. Children who are exposed to television advertisements for unhealthy food and who are not educated well enough on good nutrition will grow up and feed their families the same unhealthy foods they ate as kids. A big way fast food giants are able to make certain young people have access to unhealthy food is by strategically placing franchises in close proximity to schools. They will often place three times as many outlets within walking distance of schools than in areas where there are no schools nearby. The way fast food advertising is targeted towards children is very alarming considering how important good nutrition is for young people and how a child’s eating habits can affect their growth and
David Zinczenko, author of the article “Don’t Blame The Eater” heavily contends that fast-food chains are the leading problem of our nation’s childhood obesity population rise. Blaming these restaurants for failing to inform consumers of the nutritional facts and calories on the food items, as they are on grocery items. Falsely, there are in fact labels on food such as Mcdonalds wraps they just might be hard for consumers to see. He claims “But where, exactly, are consumers--particularly teenagers-- supposed to find alternatives?”. When in actuality, there are many healthier alternatives than just your local Mcdonalds or Taco Bell. For example, it is very convenient to drive (just as you would to your local Mcdonalds) to a nearby Subway and create a sub full of nutritional helpings. Even more so, it is also beneficial to walk into your local grocery store or Wal-mart and purchase a pre-made
In the article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko blames the fast food companies for causing the obesity epidemic. He told his own story as a kid growing up at the time when fast food was the most popular choice and how it made him a “portly fast-food patron” (241). He then accuses such companies of failing to put a warning label on high calorie. In addition, Zinczenko encourages the new spate of lawsuits against the food industry to give children and their busy parents an opportunity to have a better and healthier food choice. Though I concede Zinzenko’s opinion in addressing the responsibility of the food industry, I still insist that the industry is not the only one who is responsible for this “time bomb” (242). I believe the responsibility belongs to parents, who play an important role in their children’s food orientation, schools, for
Government date shows that in the past thirty years, rate of being overweight in six to eleven year olds is up 19% and 6% in age 12 to 19. Without support, school lunches remain high in fat. (Finkelstien) According to the CDCP, obesity is double what it was in children and triple in adolescents since 1980. Many reforms were attempted to help this problem, but many inadvertently caused more problems. (Finkelstien) A 730 calorie lunch should have no more than 24 grams of fat and no more than 8 grams of it saturated yet the average USDA lunch has 31 grams of fat and 14 rams of it is saturated. (Yeoman) These very high levels of fat are why obesity is becoming worse in children. It can be concluded that school food is still extremely high in fat and this can be directly linked to the high rates of obesity in young children and
“More than a third of the county's children are overweight or obese.”(Gustin, 1). As shocking as this is, it's true. One of the big reasons that children and teens are overweight is because of the foods that they eat. They are fed these fattening and unhealthy foods by the school system. Their futures can be changed if we change our choices. Having more nutritious lunches can have a positive impact on the health of American teens.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” meaning that America’s children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For, as the world waged war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of the country’s soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling excess agricultural goods was more important than building a healthy, well-balanced meal for students. Unfortunately, many children coming from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school lunches, so in order to compensate, the School Lunch Program changed its focus to help these students. This program, however, decreased schools’ lunch budgets, and schools had a hard time keeping up with the amount of free meals they had to provide, so they came up with some extra ways to increase revenue. However, in a small town in Massachusetts, one chef makes a difference in the health of the school lunch students eat each day, and proves that hiring a trained chef to cook real, healthy meals can increase profit. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most schools across the nation. The quality of health of the food being served in school lunches is extremely poor and was allowed to decline even more with a new set of rule changes. However, there are some improvements currently being made to increase the quality of health of the food being served to students, including teaching them all about food and its nutritional information, both good and bad. In order for students to eat healthier lunches at school, the USDA needs to implement healthier ...
Since 1971, obesity has increased 70.4% (Lewis). Obesity has accelerated at a ridiculous rate. Over 32 million children eat school lunch every day (Lewis). One or two thirds of their daily meals are provided by their schools; therefore most of their daily consumption is trusted in the hands of our government (Lewis). Since obesity has escalated tremendously since the 1970’s, it is only reasonable to make their school lunches responsible for the growth in obesity over the last 45 years (Food Timeline).
Williamson, D. A., Han, H., Johnson, W. D., Martin, C. K., & Newton, R. L. (2013). Modification of the school cafeteria environment can impact childhood nutrition. Results from the Wise Mind and LA Health studies. Appetite, 61, 77–84. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2012.11.002
First of all, an increasing amount of kids are becoming overweight because their schools pressure them to eat sugary, fatty, and high-calorie foods. Not only do many schools promote consumption of harmful foods, many schools also actively serve them in school lunches. In 1963, 4% of kids were obese; currently, approximately 17% of kids are obese. Some might argue that kids themselves are the reason for the increase, because school lunches also provide healthier foods. Unfortunately, most kids do not have much of a choice - healthier foods are priced much higher than their unhealthy counterpart, consequently many parents do not want their kids to buy the more expensive, yet healthier product. In my 3½ years ...
In the Article “Don’t Blame the Eater”, the author, David Zinczenko discounts many details while adverting his notion that Fast Food Corporations are at fault for obesity in adolescents. Zinczenko uses rhetoric, and personal experience to divert the reader’s attention to the emotional aspects of the above mentioned argument instead of showing genuine refutable actualities. At the start of his article Zinczenko complicates matters when he writes “And the problem isn’t just theirs- it’s all of ours.”, implying that we contribute to obesity misfortunes among children. However, his personal account about being a teen who acquired a large quantity of weight because of an assiduous mother, and lack of food alternatives contradicts the statement
Many people in America love to get greasy, high calorie fast food from many places such as McDonalds and its competitors, but in the article “Don’t Blame the Eater” by David Zinczenko, he reveals the health problems associated with these fatty, salty meals. His articles are affective with its well organized layout, rhetorical appeals and tone which give it a very convincing argument. As you read through the article the author reveals the underlying problems with eating fast food and how there are no warnings of such problems posted. As a former obese child who grew up to diet and watch what he ate he sets a credible stance for the argument.