Why 70 Percent Of America Is Fat Analysis

Over the past decades obesity has become an on growing epidemic in America. Seventy percent of America’s population is obese or overweight. This type of dramatic increase has been affecting the nation for years now and the percentages continue to grow. Over the years, fast food restaurants have become America’s expeditive and low priced way of consuming everyday nutrients. There are close to 50,000 fast food chains across the United States. Fast food chains have benefited greatly from America’s growing obesity epidemic. Research has found that fast food products manipulate the brain causing an individual to crave fast food products (Hyman). Accordingly, addictive supplements in fast food products are the main source of Americas growing obesity

Individuals are lead to believe that it’s all a matter of balance between healthy eating and unhealthy eating. According to the article “Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of America Is Fat?” by Dr. Mark Hyman, discoveries have been made that industrial, processed, unnatural food, otherwise known as fast food, has been proven to be biologically addictive (1). The article states that foods made with sugar, fat, and salt can be addicting. Dr. Hyman states the logic of “why is it so hard for obese people to lose weight despite the social stigma and health consequences such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and even cancer even though they have an intense desire to lose weight? It is not because they WANT to be fat. It is because certain types of food are addictive.” (Hyman). This emphasizes that the human brain has no self-control when it comes to dealing with fast food. Research has discovered that “sugar stimulates the brain’s reward centers through the neurotransmitter dopamine exactly like other addictive drugs”

In “Scripps Research Study Shows Compulsive Eating Shares Same Addictive Biochemical Mechanism with Cocaine, Heroin Abuse”, the article explains how drugs alter the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval, flooding the brain and over stimulating the receptors. Something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug (“Scripps Research Study Shows Compulsive Eating Shares Same Addictive Biochemical Mechanism with Cocaine, Heroin Abuse”). By using rats as human models the article emphasizes how these pleasure centers in the brain become less and less responsive, causing rats to quickly develop compulsive overeating habits. Therefore, “overconsumption of highly pleasurable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries” (“Scripps Research Study shows Compulsive Eating shares Same Addictive Biochemical Mechanism with Cocaine, Heroin Abuse”). This food triggering addiction leads to the building of tolerance in the human body causing over consumption which leads to obesity in American