Regulate Fast Food Research Paper

The government should regulate the fast food industry by having a tighter regulation of fast food advertising, improving nutritional standards by adding healthier options, and limiting the amount of restaurants in a given area.

The United States are amongst the one of the top countries with a major fast food industry, and restaurants are appearing more and more frequently for the easy usage of Americans. Government interference is a necessity to make sure the fast food industry do not harm Americans ever more than it already has. Primarily, the main problem has been the amount of advertisements shown on television, social media and more. Especially, with the way the advertisements are aimed towards children. Since children are easily manipulated

What is even worse is that fast food advertisements have partnered up with other major companies such as the NBA, the Olympics, movies, celebrities in which create pillar of markets. This creates an unjust advertising and marketing ploy, resulting in the Federal Trade Commision wish to ban or limit these advertisements towards kids. Additionally, the fast food businesses should improve in nutritional standards as obesity has risen over the years and approximately, “two-thirds of adults and one-third of children are overweight or obese” (Pomeranz). The obesity crisis has become a danger to all Americans and the government must regulate the industry to make sure that the fast food chains have more healthier and nutrient-filled options. Attorneys General can play an integral role in advancing the food and obesity policy as they have specific authorities available for them, as a matter of fact, they also played a major part in solving the tobacco problem and have recently posed lawsuits against food companies to protect the people of dangerous outcomes (Pomeranz). Other solutions can be to require fast food restaurants to display nutritional information about calories and fat on the food menus when purchasing and require all fast food chain

Americans also believe that the government should not interfere with the fast food industry as it should not be the responsibility of the government to worry about what the citizens eat, but personal responsibility. If the government regulates the food industry, then the government would control American’s diets into eating a certain way or banning the consumption of certain foods. More objections of government regulation is that the fast food chains cannot be blamed wholeheartedly for the increase in obesity and other related illnesses. According to an article, “college-educated people—not the poorly educated—accounted for the most rapid growth in BMI scores between the 1970s and the 1990s... the percentage of obese college-educated women nearly tripled between the early 1970s and the early 1990s...the proportion of obese women without high school degrees rose by only 58 percent” (Buchholz). Buchholz argues that fast food cannot be the primary reason for obesity and that there must be other factors contributing to the obesity epidemic. He also claims that Americans have a wider choice of healthy fast food options and yet the more educated people are becoming more obese rather than the poorly educated. Although this may be true in that fast food industry is not the only source of danger in American’s health, it is still