Obesity and fast foods: the deadly link
Obesity and fast foods: there is little doubt about the link. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. And it’s an epidemic that has grown hand in hand, step by step, with the fast food industry.
Eric Schlosser in his brilliant and powerful book, Fast Food Nation, describes the US as “an empire of fat,” and he clearly and convincingly blames this on the fast food industry’s doorstep.
Obesity Fast Food Facts
Twice as many American adults are obese today as they were in the 1960s. More than half of all adults and a quarter of all children are now obese. During this same period, fast food has become cheaper and easier to buy.
More evidence of the link between obesity and fast food can be found outside of the US. Since the early 1980s, American-style fast food culture has spread like wildfire across the globe. … And obesity has followed, accompanied by its many unwanted side effects: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other diseases.
As people in countries like Japan and China have abandoned traditional healthy diets in favor of fast food, rates of obesity and associated diseases have skyrocketed.
In countries that have resisted the spread of fast food culture, such as France, Italy and Spain, obesity is much less of a problem. The good news is that there is now more awareness about the ill effects of fast food than ever before, thanks in part to books like Fast Food Nation and documentary films like Morgan Spurlock’s hard-hitting popular Super Size Me.
There also seems to be a genuine change in people’s attitudes towards food and how it is produced. As Schlosser modestly says of his book: “Its success should not be attributed to my writing style, my ability to tell stories, or the novelty of my plots.
“If the same book had been published a decade ago, with the same words in the same order, it probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention. Not just in the United States, but throughout Western Europe, people are starting to question the massive , homogenizing systems that produce, distribute and market their food. I believe the unexpected popularity of Fast Food Nation has a simple but profound explanation. Times are a changing.”
What can we do about fast food and obesity?
So what can we as consumers do to address the problem of obesity and fast food?
First, we can stop supporting unhealthy, traditional fast food chains. We prefer to buy at outlets that sell healthy alternatives. More and more of these restaurants and delicatessens are opening. There must be at least one near you. Support it!
Another thing we can do is pressure our congressman (or congressman or some other political representative if we are in a country outside of the US) to ban all ads promoting high-fat and high-sugar foods to children. .
As Schlosser points out, prevention is much better than cure. “A ban on advertising unhealthy foods to children would discourage eating habits that are not only difficult to break, but potentially life-threatening.”
Such a ban may sound far-fetched, until you remember that 35 years ago a ban on cigarette advertising sounded just as unlikely. Five years later, Congress banned cigarette ads on television and radio. And those ads were aimed at adults, not children.
Smoking has declined since then.
It’s time we did something similar with obesity and fast food.
