Is Fast Food the New Tobacco

        As of now, the percentage of Americans in the United States that are obese is currently 42.0%. That makes the obesity crisis a nation-wide epidemic that affects nearly half of all Americans. At this point, one has to ask whose job is it to grab this issue head on and get it under the control? The answer is the government. While someone’s weight may seem like a private issue, at the end of the day, we can not continue to let this get out of hand as the consequences will be deadly.

In the documentary “What the Health,” the terrifying realites of obesity are displayed through a number of people before they turned their lives around. One woman’s body was so damaged from the food that she ate she was no longer able to even walk around her block. Her heart had suffered so badly that she was actually thirty days or less away from having a heart attack. Needless to say, my appetite was gone after I saw the array of health issues she had. Sadly this is a reality that millions upon millions of Americans live with everyday. Just to think that it could all get a little more under control with just a few tighter restrictions and more information about what we’re eating. In the article “Don’t Blame the Eater” the author, David Zincheko argues this exact point. He writes, “For example, one company's Web site lists its chicken salad as containing 150 calories; the almonds and noodles that come with it (an additional 190 calories) are listed separately. Add a serving of the 280-calorie dressing, and you've got a healthy lunch alternative that comes in at 620 calories” (Zinchecko). That is one-third of the calories one man needs in a day. Imagine that on top of a hefty dinner, breakfast, and a few snacks. It’s horrfic how the food industry can just lie to it’s consumers and get away with it, hence why we need those restrictions put into place. Others might argue that it is the consumer’s job to keep themself in check, but the ways they want to do it are a little ridiculous. The author of “What You Eat Is Your Buisness” suggests that the best way to get obesity under control is to start hurting the people who continue to live unhealthy lifestyles. The article reads, “That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize poor ones.” This statement is absurd. There is no way you can penalize people for the eating habit issues they have. This just further proves that the people who have not been on the other side of it have no idea how hard it is to change your life around, and really shows that we actually do need government assistance if we want to change things. 

As you can see, we truthfully do not not have enough time left to start teaching people about proper eating habits. We are already too far in to continue on this way and will be just enabling more and more people to suffer if the government does not step in soon to do something. So really it just comes down to this, what is more important, the health of our country or a Burger King? We all know what the right answer is, and it is about time we start acting on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCORDl4bqDE\

This video explains the roots of the obesity epidemic and what we can do to help stop it.