Obesity is a bigger social issue than more people would like to think. The United States of America is the one country in the world, where our people living in poverty are either overweight or obese. This disease is killing people, and it will become more rampant in this country if we don’t do something.
My home state, Georgia’s, obesity rate is 30.5 percent. We are number nineteen out of the fifty states in obesity rates. Colorado has the lowest obesity rate in the United States. It sits at 21.3 percent. Arkansas has the highest obesity rate in the U.S. sitting at 35.9 percent.The obesity rate for American adults sits at an outstanding thirty-six percent (78.6 million adults). Since 1970, the obesity rate has gone up forty percent. The rates for children and adolescents are at seventeen percent, which is almost triple, the percentage of what it was just one generation ago.
Three-year-olds that come from low-income households have a thirty percent rate of being overweight. White males have a 71.4 percent obesity rate, which is the highest for all males. Black women have the highest obesity rate for all females. It sits at eighty-two percent. Most of these women are single moms, and they need energy to get through their day. They keep eating just to stay awake. They don’t realize they are excessively eating, and they will continue to pack on more and more fat. A lot of women, whether they’re single or not, do not have time to cook when they get home. They have to eat fast food with their children almost every night. If someone is overweight or obese they expose themselves to type two diabetes, high blood pressure/cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. These are just a few of the many diseases and problems that are the effects of obesity.
I believe the number one cause for obesity is eating fast food. People should know that eating fast food regularly is detrimental to their health, and I believe they do know that. The problem is they don’t care. They will keep eating out, as long as it’s convenient to them. One out of every four Americans eats fast food every day. Americans spend annually $100 billion dollars on fast food each year (para1, Shocking Fast Food Statistics You Should Know). The popular fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s specifically cater to children. I work at Burger King as a cashier. I see dozens of kids come in the restaurant each day. A lot of the children I see are already overweight, and they aren’t even in their teenage years. Their overweight or obese parents come to me and order their food. They order separate burgers, large fries, and a large drink for each of them. The meals are cheaper than other establishments. The parents don’t realize the food is packed with artificial flavoring, hydrogenated oils, and high fructose corn syrup. These ingredients can be very damaging to the body. Both parents have just gotten off from work, and they want to feed their kids so they can all go home. That is the story I usually hear the customers say, when I take their order.The government is not against any of the fast food restaurants, in fact, I think they promote them. They know the ingredients that are put into that Whopper, or Big Mac, and they still feed it to people. They don’t mind making people fat. It’s disgusting.
The amount of technology children use is baffling. They have their phones with them all day long. When they come home from school, they either sit down with their eyes glued to their phones, or they play video games. These routines never use to be common for children. I don’t think playing video games or playing on your phone makes you fat. I do think that it definitely contributes to the process. Most kids don’t want to go outside and play, in fact it’s not even safe for children to go outside by themselves anymore. There are so many predators lurking around. Parents don’t want there kids outside when they are not home. These children are in the house by themselves playing video games, and more than likely eating some sort of sweet or salty snack food, until their parents arrive home and they all go out to dinner. They never burned the calories that they took in during the day.
My brother, sister, and I use to all be overweight. We were overweight because we ate a lot of fast food, and we hardly ever exercised. My brother also had a tendency to play video games and eat potato chips, instead of going out to play sports with his friends. By the time my sister was twelve she was already one-hundred ninety-five pounds. My brother was thirteen, and he weighed two-hundred pounds. I was five, and I weighed almost seventy pounds. The average weight for a twelve year old girl is between sixty-five and 120 pounds. A thirteen-year-old boy’s average weight is 100 pounds. And the average weight for a five year old boy is forty pounds. As you can see we were all very overweight. All three of us would get called names like butterball, tubby, and elephant. These names always hurt my feelings. My brother always laughed along with his friends who called him these names. He wanted people to like him, so he took the name calling like a champ. My sister had a real hard time making friends. She thought she was ugly because she was so big. I was more like my sister; I was so much wider than all of my friends, at the time they weighed only forty-five pounds. The name calling went on for almost a year. One day I told my mom that I thought I was fat, and I needed to lose weight so people would like me. She just stared at me with a blank face, and she said okay. My mother wasn’t fat, but she had been gaining some pounds.
My mother threw out all the sugar cereals, such as Lucky Charms, and Cocoa Puffs. She also tossed all the salty snacks, and soda. We stopped eating fast food altogether. She made a notebook of what the correct amount of food all of us should eat. We could only eat the portions that were correct for our ages, no more, no less. She was going to lose weight with us. My brother and sister hated the diet right off the bat, because we only ate organic grown food. I enjoyed it because in my mind, I was going to look better. I was going to be thin and handsome. All four of us started running regularly. It was very hard for both my siblings to stick with it. They both wanted to quit. My sister did quit one month our diet and exercise routine. She said it was too hard, and there was no way she could ever do it again. The three of us continued to stick with it. During the next two months, my sister gained an additional twenty-five pounds. She was very distraught, and she eventually broke down physically and mentally. My mother eventually got her to come join us again with our diet, and running sessions. My sister cried every time she ran, but my mother was right by her side. And my brother was right by my side when we ran. We did this routine for a year and a half. My sister lost sixty-seven pounds. My brother lost eighty-two pounds. I lost twenty-one pounds, and my mother lost fifty pounds. We all looked better. We felt better than we had ever before. It’s been eleven years since we completed our diet. My brother started body-building when he was twenty-one years old. He has even placed in a couple of competitions. My sister became certified as a yoga instructor when she was nineteen-years-old and my mother became certified as an aerobic instructor a year after our diet. They have taught numerous classes, and they love doing it.They want to help other people who struggle with their weight now. I became a runner, and I completed my sixth marathon this year.
This essay was written to show my argument of why there is obesity. It’s a terrible soon to be epidemic. If we don’t start taking steps to lower the obesity rate, then many people will die pointless deaths. There are many ways to become healthier. People need to make the choice to start, and they need to stay with it. They will become successful if they stick with their choice, but the decision is all up to them.
Works Cited
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL, Johnson CL: Prevalence and trends in obesity among U.S. adults, 1999–2000.
Schwarz, Steven. “Obesity in Children.” Emedicine.medscape.com. 24 June 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
Kidd, Deanna. “Shocking Fast Food Statistics You Should Know.” Blog.partnersforyourhealth.com. 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.
