As Americans, especially Mississippians, we are morbidly obese. Mississippi as the second most obese state has a 37.3% obesity rate. Besides a culture that doesn’t require exercise to earn a living, we also eat fast food fervently. How many times have you personally had a long day, not felt like cooking and went to a fast- food restaurant like Chick-Fil-A? America has 3 million soda machines, we walk less than half a mile on average, and most Americans eat out from one to four times a week. This is why we are the fattest nation in the world.
A lot of people think fast-food companies are responsible for this craze sweeping the nation. Honestly, they are partly at fault. Two girls sued McDonald’s for making them overweight, but it the lawsuit was dismissed.
Morgan Spurlock, the mind behind Supersize Me, did an experiment using himself to figure out if fast food was really all that bad. He ate nothing but McDonald’s three meals a day, for 30 days, to see if it would affect him. If he was asked to supersize a meal, he had to. He started out in perfect health: perfect cholesterol, iron, blood pressure, and he weighed 185.5 pounds to start out with.
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By the end of one month, he weighed 210 pounds and his liver was in grave danger. The amount of fat he consumed flooded his liver with lipids causing his doctors to tell him to get off the diet immediately and that he was not going to be ok. Besides that, he only found happiness when eating and felt depressed and sick between meals. His blood pressure went up astronomically as did his blood sugar. He even went through an episode where he couldn’t breathe.
It leads one to believe that fast- food is dangerous to anyone and everyone. Most nutritionists say you shouldn’t eat fast food ever. Fast food companies admit that their food is dangerous but put the consumer at blame for eating there. In reality, companies spend 1.4 billion dollars on marketing and making sure your kid wants to eat there.
Kids recognize characters like Ronald McDonald over Jesus; if that’s not marketing so people come to your restaurant, I don’t know what is. Besides that, there isn’t information to inform people about what they’re eating! The online nutrition guide isn’t applicable to 50% of Americans because they don’t have internet. At heart, fast-food companies are a business that make attempt to recreate nostalgia, so you will spend your money. They aren’t looking out for your health.
Fairly enough, the people in America are to blame too. We are the ones buying the fast-food several times a week and making unhealthy decisions. Part of the problem is our laziness in the fact we don’t want to go to the grocery store. We don’t want to exercise to burn off the calories we’ve eaten. We don’t try to make the best decisions.
American culture accepts, if not promotes, eating fast food. We don’t fat shame because one, it hurts people’s feelings, but also, because it is so common. America should look at fast-food companies to give better information and options to eat, but we should also take responsibility for our own health and diet.
