Obesity on Americans (Essay Sample)

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Obesity
Today, over half of Americans are overweight or obese. Obesity means having excess body fat, meaning that the person’s weight is far above their ideal body weight. It can affect any individual from older adults to young children. The causes of obesity include lack of physical activity, over-eating, the environment, hormones, and genetics. It is a serious health condition that has effects such as death, eating disorders and depression. Nevertheless, there are also many solutions to this menace for instance medication, surgery, exercise, and dieting. Sometimes, obesity tends to run in families. The search for an obesity gene is challenging because family members also tend to share lifestyle and eating habits. Recent research, however, concluded that adults who were adopted as children had weights closer to their biological parents, not their adopted parents (Dawes and Laura 245). In this case, the individual's genes had more influence on their weight that the environment in their adoptive home. In the world, today, obesity and other lifestyle diseases are becoming worryingly common. Therefore, it is paramount that the country continues to face this crisis courageously by educating all individuals on the matters related to obesity at an early age.
Obesity is a complex condition, but as stated above, is grouped under three main headings: lack of exercise, poor choice of food and lack of awareness. Today, most people have incredibly poor food choices since they eat more and more fast and junk foods that are high in cholesterol and fats and contain too much carbohydrate. It, therefore, overloads the body with sugar and fats which are at long last, converted into body fat. The second primary cause of obesity is the lack of exercise. People spend most of their time in offices and homes and often forget the importance of taking a walk or jogging because they have cars. Children, on the other hand, now spend their time playing video games instead of physical play. The third factor is the lack of awareness about healthy eating habits. Advertising confuses people with claims for commercially processed food (Doerr and Emily 382). Parents give their children little guidance on what to eat and give them too much choice. People no longer eat vegetables and fresh fruits in their day to day routines. The government should educate people on the importance of eating natural, rather than processed food.
The effects on the society and individuals are enormous. First and foremost, it creates a vicious circle in which parents overfeed their children, who in turn grow up to become overeating adults. Americans, in particular, have a tendency towards excessive soft drink and fast food consumption. Eating cheeseburgers, pizza, and French fries and drinking Coca-Cola are the major metabolism inhibitors in the United States currently. By consuming such drinks and foods regularly, American children, adults, and teenagers slow down their metabolism by up to twelve times. It, therefore, means that the same food will be absorbed and digested twelve times slower than by a healthy eating individual. The other effect is that overweight people find it harder to exercise, which leads to increased consumption. The obese people mostly suffer from low self-esteem, especially children, which results in increased comfort food consumption. The medical consequences, on the other hand, are enormous (Gill and Timothy 363). It can lead to diabetes, the biggest health risk to obese individuals which harms the liver, kidneys among many other hazards. High blood pressure is another risk that can lead to death at any time because it also causes liver and kidney damage, heart problems and other serious health probl