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Should Fast Food Chains Pay A Portion Of Healthcare For Obesity?

578 Words3 Pages

Fast Food Chains Should Pay a Portion of Healthcare for Obesity
Eugene Washington
Columbia Southern University

Fast Food Chains Should Pay a Portion of Healthcare for Obesity
The old saying you are what you eat has been around a long time. If fast food chains would adopt the slogan, the obesity epidemic would slowly disappear. Look to your left and right, you are constantly being bombarded with ads about fast food. According to public health workers nearly one-third of American’s are obese, and it is estimated that in the year twenty thirty, nearly forty two percent of American’s will be obese. Who’s to blame? Research has shown that fast food is often unhealthy; research has also shown that obesity has increased as fast food chains expanded. …show more content…

The installation would be a big advertisement of fast food chains going in and off post. Since the early 1970’s obesity has more than tripled in children. Adults classified as overweight or obese rose from half to two-thirds of the population. Over this same period, the number of fast food restaurants more than doubled.
Nearly twenty one percent of U.S. medical cost could be contributed to obesity. Studies estimate that obesity related medical cost at around $190 billion dollars, with childhood obesity costing $14 billion. Many believe that fast food is at least partly to blame for the U.S.'s rising obesity rates. Americans are the most overweight people in the world. Yet on every major street in America there is some type of fast food store, enticing you to come in and buy their …show more content…

Research indicates that the amount of fast food you consume plays a contributing role in developing obesity. Forty percent of American meals are now bought and consumed outside the home. Diabetes, obesity and heart disease are now the nation’s number one public health problem. The nation has watched the rate of obesity increase steadily within the last thirty years, during this same time period the nation has also witnessed and explosion in the number of fast food chains.

References

Schlosser, E. (2001). Fast food nation: The dark side of the all-American meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Do Fast Food Restaurants Contribute to Obesity? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/bah/2009no1/w14721.
Fast Food Statistics and Obesity in America. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://morefocus.com/health/obesity-causes-fast-food/ Maclay, K. (2009). Linking fast food proximity to obesity. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/04_obesity.shtml. Pew Research Center. (2006). Eating more; Enjoying less. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from

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