Overweight and Unhealthy: A Modern Day Problem

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Overweight and Unhealthy
In a fast pace, more technological advanced world, everything is growing, including people's diets and health problems. In today's world, it seems like everything is getting larger in size and quantity. This is true of the rapid increase of obesity. Unhealthy, unfit and extremely large are things associated with obese people. All are true, but these problems go so much deeper than physical problems including stress on the body and social issues. In the past decade, both child and adult obesity has rose drastically. According to nih.org, adult obesity from 2009 to 2010 affected an alarming 69 percent of the population with more than 78 million adult Americans alone being obese (Public). Globally, the number of obese adults are even higher. In 2005, around 400 million adults around the world were obese and an estimated 700 million will be by 2015 (Shah). With the ever growing number of adults getting to an extremely large size, children are also letting themselves get to that point also. Though obesity rates are much higher in adults, child obesity is not a problem to look over and is still growing quickly. In the past 30 years, childhood obesity has doubled in children ages two to five, tripled in children six to eleven and more than tripled in adolescence between twelve to nineteen. Almost 17 percent of adolescence from 2 to 19 are obese (Public). Obesity is a large problem and is growing not only in America but all over the world. The health risks associated with being obese are drastic and cause for much deeper health and psychological issues than ever before.
Defining obesity isn't simply looking at someone and deciding but is taking measurements of the body, height and weight. Obesity is most accurat...

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...n which physical attractiveness is a specific idea, obese people are constantly comparing themselves to an ideal figure. Obese children experience harassment or rejection from peers at school creating a constant negative environment starting as young as preschool aged students. With the rejection from peers, co-workers and society, obese people can have mass amounts of anxiety and experience despair (Stern). The overall quality of life is also a problem in obese people. Often obese people face discrimination in school, work and social activities. Obese people are considered "lazy or weak-willed" and blamed for being as unhealthy as they are thus it is not uncommon for obese people to have a lack of romantic relationships and lower income. "Disapproval of overweight persons expressed by some individuals may progress to bias, discrimination, and even torment" (Sharp).

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