Essay 3 Final Draft
Obesity: America’s Sad Story
Melissa Hinkley
Baker College – Owosso
June 6, 2012
Obesity: America’s Sad Story
Walk into any all you can eat restaurant and look around. There are servers busy waiting tables and clearing dishes. There are diners eating and chatting. The smell of cooking food lingers in the air, steam rises from the hot food tables and the chocolate cake on the dessert bar is looking quite tempting. Look a little harder though, particularly at the diners sitting at the tables. Are they looking a little overweight to you? How about the customers just walking through the door behind you, do they look like they could afford to miss a meal? The answer is probably a resounding yes. There are a staggering number of people severely overweight. In America obesity is fast becoming an epidemic, second only to smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control one-third of adults in the United States are obese and another third are overweight (Freedman, 2011, para. 1). The effects of the nation’s obesity epidemic are immense: taxpayers, businesses, communities, and individuals have spent hundreds of billions of dollars each year because of obesity. This includes an estimated $168 billion in medical costs (CDC). Obesity is the reason that the current generation of youth is predicted to live a shorter life than their parents.
There are several things that can be done to reverse the growing epidemic; yet important opportunities to tackle obesity at the national policy level, including changes that would enable more Americans to eat healthy and be active, have gone largely unmet. There have been many proposed solutions and as expected, none of them have been popular with Americans or the companies that are contributing to the problem. The battle of the bulge goes beyond exercising; physical activity has already been proven through studies to aid in reducing obesity. There are simply too many processed foods, pre-packaged
Melissa Hinkley
Baker College – Owosso
June 6, 2012
Obesity: America’s Sad Story
Walk into any all you can eat restaurant and look around. There are servers busy waiting tables and clearing dishes. There are diners eating and chatting. The smell of cooking food lingers in the air, steam rises from the hot food tables and the chocolate cake on the dessert bar is looking quite tempting. Look a little harder though, particularly at the diners sitting at the tables. Are they looking a little overweight to you? How about the customers just walking through the door behind you, do they look like they could afford to miss a meal? The answer is probably a resounding yes. There are a staggering number of people severely overweight. In America obesity is fast becoming an epidemic, second only to smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control one-third of adults in the United States are obese and another third are overweight (Freedman, 2011, para. 1). The effects of the nation’s obesity epidemic are immense: taxpayers, businesses, communities, and individuals have spent hundreds of billions of dollars each year because of obesity. This includes an estimated $168 billion in medical costs (CDC). Obesity is the reason that the current generation of youth is predicted to live a shorter life than their parents.
There are several things that can be done to reverse the growing epidemic; yet important opportunities to tackle obesity at the national policy level, including changes that would enable more Americans to eat healthy and be active, have gone largely unmet. There have been many proposed solutions and as expected, none of them have been popular with Americans or the companies that are contributing to the problem. The battle of the bulge goes beyond exercising; physical activity has already been proven through studies to aid in reducing obesity. There are simply too many processed foods, pre-packaged