healthy food vs. fast food

healthy food vs. fast food

Malnourishment in the United States

Malnourishment in the United States is caused mainly by the consumption of unhealthy, cheap foods that are low in nutrition and staffed with calories and fat. This eventually leads to obesity. As surprising as it may seem, one of the factors affecting obesity is poverty. As a matter of fact, there can be no doubts that poverty and obesity are interconnected. Provided more attention is focused on this link, the health of the Americans can be improved.

According to the statistics, about two-thirds of all American adults and more than one-tenth of American children are either overweight or obese. One-tenth of families suffer from food insecurity such as obesity and hunger, which take place when access to nutritionally satisfactory and safe foods is either restricted or unstable. At first glance it seems illogical as scarcity of food should result in underweight people. Nevertheless, children from families with low income are about 2.6 times as likely as children from rich families to get obese. It means that poor citizens are in some kind of unfavourable conditions when it comes to obesity.

The reality is that not all American households have the financial capabilities to provide satisfactory housing, transportation, comodities, medical assistance, education, food, and clothing that all families need. Many families often have to buy less healthy but cheaper foods instead of healthy but more expensive foods. Unfortunately, usually the most inexpensive option available to these people are foods with low nutritional value as to calorie content. That is why lower income families are at the highest disadvantage of malnutrition.

It has been revealed by a recent study that such health problems linked to obesity, like hypertension and diabetes, are more widespread among people with low income. Each year about $70 billion is spent on health-care due to obesity. Obesity, the condition of an abnormal accumulation of body fat,...

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