Fast Food or Fat Food?
In today's society, fast food has become a large part of many American's lives. With the rising numbers of obese people, it is hard not to draw a correlation between the increase in fast food and obesity. Most obese people don’t want to be obese and wish they could lose weight, yet they continue to struggle with their fast food intake and obesity. This is due to the advertising done on the consumers, the highly addictive food itself, and most importantly, how advertising and addiction combine with children to form habits that are kept once they become adults. These factors are the reasons that fast food restaurants are to blame for the rising obesity and health risks across America.
Now that it has been established that fast food is the main cause behind the rising obesity numbers in America, it is time to dig deeper and show how exactly these fast food chains are at fault for this dilemma. A common topic when talking about people overeating fast food is addiction. When numbers are brought up about obesity and how often people visit fast food restaurants, people tend to slough it off as fat people who are too lazy to cook their own food or break the habit of visiting fast food restaurants. However, people don't realize the true addictive power that food can have on someone, especially fast food.
Very extensive studies have done on food addiction at the Yale School of Public Health. In these studies, amongst other things, they focused on the comparison between drug addiction and food addiction. They found that both “eating fast foods activates brain circuitry also activated by addictive drugs” (Paolo 2). In addition, the extent to which foods activate brain circuitry to a point where it “evolves to regulate dietary behavior” (Paolo 1), and thus becomes addictive, depends on the type of food. Natural foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts and other foods that are minimally processed have almost no addictive nature. On the other...