America’s Obesity Problem
In recent decades fast food, unhealthy lifestyles, urban living, and
expensive healthcare have spawned an obesity epidemic in America
greater than any other in the world. The rise in obesity rates have
almost doubled in the past quarter century, causing controversy of where
the problem lies. One of the biggest problems are the corporations
aiming at the most vulnerable populations such as low-income families,
Hispanics, African Americans and those with little to no educational
backgrounds.
America’s obesity epidemic is gaining attention from politicians to
put laws into effect that will help control corporations push to advertise
to these low-income homes. Mississippi is the most obese state also
happens to be the poorest. And with the rates of obesity increasing in 16
states last year and declining in none, America's diet is influencing
policy, politics and programs. Because of the lack of education many
Americans receive about nutrition, they continue to make unhealthy
lifestyle choices not by their own fault, but because of habit, peers and
their cultural surroundings.
In Micheal Pollan’s “The Food Movement” he argues that the issue of
food goes hand and hand with politics. Here he quotes Michelle Obama
Chilton 2
and her standing of the issue of obesity in contrast to the corporations
ground of “personal responsibility” because of the way they market
products toward the younger population. Michelle Obama told food
assemblers that they should “rethink the products that you’re offering,
the information that you provide about these products, and how you
market those products to our children.” Corporations are now entering
the spot light and being held...