Obesity Critique

Period 3 AP Psych

The title of the article asks an important question, “What’s to blame for the surge in super size Americans?” There are numerous contributing factors that all need to somehow be combated as the obesity epidemic becomes a top priority issue and begins to claim more lives with every passing year. With “65% of our population obese or overweight,” Americans are forced to stop and think about how the statistics could have so drastically changed from “1960 with only 45%.” Obesity experts all agree that it stems from “multiple, complex factors- environmental, biological, and genetic, making losing and even maintaining weight in today’s environment an uphill battle.” Our society provides food almost everywhere, where the cuisine is “inexpensive, good tasting and served in large portions,” combine this with a lack of physical activity, high stress levels, and sedentary jobs and lifestyles and you have the key players that cause obesity, along with serious side effects like, sleep apnea, diabetes, stroke, heart attacks, and other debilitating conditions.” However, some American’s may have limited options as to where they can buy their groceries or eat their next meal. “Healthy foods are less accessible, less convenient, not promoted, and more expensive.” “More people are eating out more than ever”, and unfortunately for many overweight families, the highly publicized, cheap but tasty foods at McDonald’s that are available on every other block, may serve as a normal dinner no matter how unhealthy and nutrient deficient it is. And with newly found evidence that “obese people harbor a different from of a chromosome 10 gene that may increase the amount of GABA in their systems to stimulate appetites,” helps to show why “some people may be more prone to weight gain than others, given the same environmental influences” but differing in genetic predispositions. But most importantly, the American people are fighting back at this health crisis. New laws have been enacted to “extend nutrition labeling,” intervene in city’s layouts to make people walk more and drive less, combat unhealthy eating early in schools, and teach and target both parents and children about eating healthy, exercising, and living a healthy lifestyle.

Furthermore, as scientists struggle to understand but also contain the mass outbreak of obesity in America, a groundbreaking study has been released that may “offer a possible biological explanation and working model for why people tend to eat fattier foods when under chronic stress” and “initially gain weight in the abdomen.” Conducted by Mary Dallman, the experiment consisted of “rats placed under chronic stress by physical restraint or exposure to cold compared with rats under acute stress and those not stressed at all.” The conclusions depicted that the “chronically stressed rats chose fattier, more sugary diets,