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Fast Food Obesity and Ever Expanding Waistlines

No longer do Americans need to blame their genes for their becoming obese, and they need not look far to find the real cause for their oversized frames. With plenty of unhealthy as well as excessive advertising of low cost fast food and greater consumption of such foods, one will immediately realize that fast food obesity is becoming a problem for which a quick solution needs to be found immediately.

Americans are more and more becoming oversized and this may not be due to lack of controlling the self, but because of the “toxic food environment”, or in other words, the great many strips of fast-food outlets mushrooming all along America’s roadways.

Striking Americans With Full Force

With Americans being constantly barraged by burger advertising, and with row upon row of candy stacked up near every checkout counter in every convenience store, it is no wonder that fast food obesity is striking Americans with full force. And, with the possibility of eating while filling gas at a gas station, the Fritos, Twinkies and Coke consumed will not lessen the effects of fast food obesity in a hurry.

Nevertheless, genes and a measure of self control may also affect a person’s obese state that may lead to diabetes as well as other health problems. However, fast food is winning the war on the obesity front, and people with the desire to consume such food will face the prospect of paying high costs to get treated, which would, in most cases, outweigh the benefits, and thus weight-gain relapses continue to remain on the high side.

Environment certainly is a driving force in fast food obesity and needs to be curtailed, given the fact that Americans are passively accepting the consumption of unhealthy food. Genetics, no doubt, plays an important role in fast food obesity, but it is the environment that drives it forward. With the ready availability of high fat, high sugar foods that taste good and cost less, these unhealthy foods are changing the scenario for Americans, since it is even possible to buy breakfasts at fast food outlets such as Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There is no doubt that such bacon-egg-cheese muffin servings are a high fat-delivery vehicle that only exacerbates the fast food obesity culture. And, the size of the servings are increasing, and with heavy dosages of advertising, the airwaves are becoming saturated with fast food this and fast food that advertisements that are attracting ever greater number of consumers.

With such cheap and unhealthy foods being consumed in greater proportions, and coupled with lessened physical activity, it is not surprising that fast food obesity is rising and will continue to do so. The fact that countries such as China, which seem to have abandoned their healthy and traditional diets for the heavily advertised fast food products is evidenced in the greater number of obese cases in that country.