Obesity, Our Epidemic.

Epidemic. Plague. Outbreak. Is this really what obesity has become in our country? According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, nearly one third of our country is obese. Why? Is it in the water? Is it some mutation that is ravaging our genetic make up? I am not discrediting individuals with legitimate medical disorders that have lead to their obesity (i.e. thyroid disorders). But in most people, obesity can be boiled down to poor diet and inactivity. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because our country is becoming more aware of these factors, and is doing something about it.

Fast food has become the center of most American family diets. And why not? It's quick, cheap, and tastes good. But with it's high fat, sugar, and salt content, it is something that is best reserved for rare occasions, and rightly so. In the article Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-like Addiction, the author Sarah Klein reports that Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida, found that junk food has the same effect on the brain as drugs like cocaine (Klein, para 2). Kenny performed a study on three groups of rats: group one was fed normal rat pellets, group two was fed fatty human foods like cheesecake, bacon, and sausage for one hour each day, and group three was allowed to pig out on the human foods for up to twenty-three hours a day. The rats in the third group, “gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.” (Klein, para 5). Said high was so consuming for the third group of rats that even when the researchers put an electric shock under their feet while in presence of the unhealthy food, they still continued to binge. Add to that the findings of another study, and the result is a bit unnerving. Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston surveyed 6,212 kids from all regions of the country and from many different socio-economic levels and found that almost one-third of American children ages four to nineteen eat fast food on a regular basis (Holguin, para 1). One can come to the conclusion, then, that these children are on the fast track to becoming obese. The added incentive of a toy from the latest Disney movie is not helping. But with today’s ongoing recession, coupled with the fact that health food is not as readily available or affordable (Krukowski, para 1), it is easy to see why many people rely on these cheap, quick foods.

The economy is thought to have something to do with the levels of inactivity that is leading to more obese children in our country, too. Debbye Turner of The Early Show reported that only six percent of schools in our country offer daily physical education classes (para 2). This is due to the fact that it costs approximately $500,000 just to start a physical education program (Turner, para 3). Since The National Association for Sports and Physical Education “recommends two and a half hours of physical activity a week for elementary school kids, and nearly four hours a week for middle and high schoolers,”(Turner, para 9) this lack of physical education programs for children is something that needs to be addressed. Another problem that needs addressing is the amount of television that our children are watching while being inactive, and what they are watching. Jane E. Brody of The New York Times quoted Dr. Margo G. Wootan, the nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest as saying, “…junk-food marketing is a major contributor to childhood obesity” (para 7). In one of the Center’s studies of 548 Boston public school students, researchers discovered that for every hour of television that a child watched, said child ate an average of 167 calories, and mostly the high-calorie, low-nutrition junk foods that are advertised for on television (Brody, para 9). Actually, another study done by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that of 8,854 food ads viewed, there were no ads for healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables, that were targeted towards children (Brody, para 8). So not only are children less active than they should be, but while they are being inactive they are being bombarded with advertisements for fatty, sugary foods.

Fortunately, the National Conference of State Legislators was quoted as saying that, “…efforts are underway to raise awareness and encourage healthy eating and a more active lifestyle” (NCSL, para 4). The First Lady, Michelle Obama, has started a “Let’s Move” program, designed to change the way that children play and eat (Parker-Pope, para 5). There is even a county in California that has banned promotional toys that accompany “child-size portions of cheese burgers and chicken nuggets if those meals don’t meet certain nutritional standards” (McKinley, para 1). It is my hope that these efforts will go a long way in changing the way that we as Americans think about nutrition and fitting healthy physical activity into our already active lives. Joseph Miller, MD, a preventive cardiologist with Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, put it best, “You don’t have to be a Nike man or woman. You don’t have to buy equipment, fancy shoes, or a gym membership…we encourage people to walk the dog, walk a little further in the parking lot, walk the concourses at the airport”(para 1). It is the little things that will add up to us becoming a more healthy country.

Treatment. Remedy. Restore to health. Through our countries continued efforts to increase awareness of the dangerously high rate of obesity, and individual efforts to eat better and be more active, it is my hope that our future will be a healthier one.




WORK CITED

Works Cited
Brody, Jane E. "Risks for Youths Who Eat What They Watch." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 19 Apr. 2010. Web. 5 May 2010. .
Dakss, Brian. "Obesity Up, Phys Ed Down." The Early Show. CBS Broadcasting Inc., 27 Jan. 2005. Web. 5 May 2010. .
Flegal, Katherine M., Margaret D. Carroll, Cynthia L. Ogden, and Lester R. Curtin. "Prevalence and Trends in Obesity Among US Adults, 1999-2008." The Journal of the American Medical Association 303.3 (2010). Health Reference Center Academic. Web. 5 May 2010. .
Krukowski, Rebecca A., Delia Smith West, Jean Harvey-Berino, and Elaine Prewitt. "Neighborhood Impact on Healthy Food Availability and Pricing in Food Stores.(Report)." Journal of Community Health 35.3 (2010). Health Reference Center Academic. Web. 5 May 2010. .
Lerche Davis, Jeanie. "Inactivity, Obesity Are Killing Americans." WebMD. WebMD, LLC., 5 Mar. 2004. Web. 5 May 2010. .
McKinley, Jesse. "Citing Obesity of Children, County Bans Fast-Food Toys." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 27 Apr. 2010. Web. 5 May 2010. .
"Nutrition, Physical Activity & Obesity Overview." The National Conference of State Legislatures. The National Conference of State Legislatures, 2006. Web. 5 May 2010. .
Parker-Pope, Tara. "In Obesity Epidemic, What?s One Cookie?" The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 Mar. 2010. Web. 5 May 2010. .