How Junk Food Can End Obesity By David Freedman Summary

In a world where there is a new diet or weight loss regime around every corner, it has become difficult to navigate through the claims as to what’s healthy and what’s not. Walking into a grocery store today, one wouldn’t have to look far to find items labelled “low fat”, “no sugar added”, “reduced calories”, and the same goes for menu items found at many popular fast food restaurants. Is this what we should be eating in order to overcome this obesity epidemic that we live in today? David Freedman seems to think so. In his article “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”, he claims that using modern food processing to make unhealthy foods more nutritious is the answer, however he fails to recognize that people need to know how to make their own healthy

In some ways, I agree. It is quite unnatural for anyone to instantly change their eating habits upon the appearance of a few more health food stores in their community. This is especially true when for many, the name Whole Foods is linked to overpriced, unnecessary, glorified “health” products. With these negative feelings, it is understandable why many steer clear of this environment. Personally, spending slightly more on a product that is substantially more nutritious is worth every penny. Nevertheless, this may not be attainable for some, as Freedman argues. However, he puts an emphasis on investing time and money into synthesizing “healthier” versions of popular junk food, instead of promoting truly healthy choices. Perhaps a better use of time and money would be increasing the convenience and accessibility of real health food. Of course, increased lifestyle education would be necessary, particularly in the less affluent communities, to accompany this increased availability of health food. Similar to learning to ride a bike, one can learn to make healthy choices, given that these choices are accessible, and places such as Whole Foods can become less daunting. In order to overcome this obesity epidemic that we live in today, the public, particularly the less affluent public, need to have access to education and resources that will help

And too bad it would largely exclude the obese masses, who would continue to sicken and die early” (theatlantic.com). In reality, a whole food revolution of the sort would not exclude the obese masses, as Freedman claims. He uses the questionable assumption that large fast food chains, such as McDonald’s, and Burger King, are actually looking out for the public and have secretly been doing so for years (theatlantic.com), to make it seem as though the whole foods movement has been the bad guy all along, promoting products that contain just as many calories and just as much fat and sugar. The reality however, is that fast food is an industry, and the main goal is to make a buck, no matter if it means selling a deep-fried, pre-frozen, synthetic fat, sugar and salt laden product and making us sick and fat. Instead, a revolution of the sort would encourage more people to change their eating habits, little by little, as they became more familiar with what was healthy and what was not. Anyone familiar with the concept of supply and demand would agree that if the popularity of these whole foods were to increase, the prices would decrease, making it not only “tailored to the small elite minority”, but accessible to everyone, including those in