Obesity Epidemic Analysis

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“Ever since the 19th century, nutritionists and the general public have accepted the "calorie" as the unit of choice for describing the energy content of food. A calorie is a unit of energy. When you hear something contains 100 calories, it's a way of describing how much energy your body could get from eating or drinking it” (Source 3). Even though there are hundreds of diets to choose from the question that lurks still is why are so many American men, women, and children still be seriously overweight? Obesity is a term that stands for having too much body fat, which sadly is still a huge problem for Americans, even today. Obesity though is different from being overweight, which means weighing too much. This overweight stature comes from …show more content…

It is a special type of diet that replaces all of your meals with prepared formulas, often in the form of liquid shakes” (US Department of Health/Source 5). As shown in this quote, many people would be somewhat brainwashed to say, Yes, zero calorie diets are the key to relieving the obesity epidemic. The overall truth of this subject is, No, because of the laws of chemistry that govern the zero calorie conspiracy to be completely false. The actuality is the calorie is a unit of thermal energy equal to the energy unit of 4.184 joules or otherwise known as the amount of energy required to elevate the temperature of 1 gram of liquid water at1°C at standard pressure. The most basic and important law that governs whether you gain weight or lose weight is the first law of thermodynamics, which expresses that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted from one type of energy to another. Although thermodynamics itself is generally not an easy concept, calories can be explained quite easily according to the principles that come with it. In the long run, your body weight is dependent only on the difference between the quantity of calories that you eat versus the amount of calories that you burn, which is also known as your caloric balance. This is where zero calorie diets essentially lie because apart from foods that have been engineered to be calorie-free, like sugar alternatives,

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