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Essay On Obesity In America

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The Economic Incentive to keep America Obese

Accredited scientists and universities all agree on this fundamental idea: a caloric surplus results in weight gain and a caloric deficit results in weight loss.This idea is regarded by most Americans as fact and heavily supported by science. With this in consideration it is rather perplexing how 68% of americans are either overweight or obese. In aggregate Americans spend more than $60 billion annually on services and products that are advertised as weight loss promoters.There’s profit to be made either getting people fat or making them think think they are losing fat. With this in mind it becomes clear as to why companies may want to convolute information regarding weight loss. Incentives for …show more content…

Look at a Mcdonald’s advertisement and displayed is a group of happy healthy kids playing soccer. Advertisements, that are near impossible for impressionable children to avoid, are constantly breaking the intuitive correlation between eating processed fatty foods and gaining weight. In 1970 President Nixon signed a bill making advertisements promoting tobacco use illegal. In 2016 480,000 deaths were related to smoking. With different studies calculating death due to obesity with slight variances, there are calculations of obesity related deaths rates ranging from 300,000-400,000 people annually. There needn't be a precise number for this data to convey that obesity is a serious epidemic. If the death toll from smoking and obesity are comparable in intensity, why is it that the deliberation and action taken to fight the stigma and death surrounding smoking is not yet paralleled by the awareness concerning the obesity epidemic? In 2012 the Obama administration proposed guidelines for food industry advertisement; this was rejected after congress passed a bill analyzing the potential job loss in the food and beverage

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