Obesity is a disease defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having a Body Mass Index, a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters, over 30. According to the National Library of Medicine, obesity affects over 34% of all Americans; moreover, the Centers for Disease Control has an estimate of 112,000 people that die due to health complications that arose from obesity.The issue with obesity is that there is no singular target for doctors and scientists to target. For example, sedentary eating, stress, and the excess of unhealthy, cheap food are main causes for the obesity epidemic in the United States of America. This paper will explore the epidemic of obesity, a record of a person living with …show more content…
Sedentary eating is the act of consuming food while immobile on a bed or couch for hours at a time; however, the issue is that paired with little routine exercise and an inability in choosing healthier options leads to a dramatic increase of weight. A medical investigation with 50,000 women conducted by Nurses’ Health Study found that for every two hours the women spent watching television each day, they had a 23 percent higher risk of becoming obese and a 14 percent higher risk of developing diabetes. Stress is another major component in understanding the epidemic of obesity because an increasing number of Americans are feeling more stressed according to the American Psychological Association.As stated by Dr. Niya Jones in the Everyday Health, chronic stress can lead a deadly path straight for obesity; for example, the chemical Serotonin, a feel good chemical, is released when eating foods high in carbohydrates or chronic stress can release excess cortisol, management of fat and energy, which causes an influx in cravings of sugary and fatty foods. Lastly, there is easy and tempting access to unhealthy and readily available junk food, which causes the body to become clogged with the excess carbohydrates, fats and sugar leading to an increased risk of multiple diseases including obesity. According to Statstica there are 232,611 fast food