Obesity

Obesity

Obesity, why is obesity a major problem in American Society today and what are the main factors that cause this epidemic in our society? The independent variables here are the living conditions, mentality of the society and affordable food. The dependent variables are the people who are living in this society. In our society today, obesity is one of the fastest growing problems in America. The total medical tab for illnesses related to obesity is $117 billion a year and climbing according to the Surgeon General and the Journal of American Medical Association, reported in March that poor diet and physical inactivity could soon overtake tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. As being part the fitness industry, I have a strong commitment in trying to help people who are overweight and obese. My ultimate goals as trainer is to help overweight people get into better shape and to hopefully make a positive difference in their lives.

In the first article, “Public Opinion and the Politics of Obesity in America” by J. Eric Oliver and Taeku Lee address that the Health policy experts have recently sounded the warning about the severe health and economic consequences of America’s growing rates of obesity. Nonetheless, even with these alarms, obesity is only beginning to penetrate the public’s awareness of as a topic of major concern. In 1970, fewer than 5 percent of children were overweight; today, over 15 percent are at an “unhealthy body weight,” a threefold increase in only thirty years (Flegal et al. 1998).

The independent variable is the public’s lack of knowledge and the lack of interest in the obesity epidemic in America. The dependent variable are overweight and obese individuals are at increased risk for hypertension, dyslipidemia, stroke, gout, certain types of cancer, psychological disorders, and other ailments also the burden obesity causes the economy resulting in a $70 billion a year in public health expenditures.

As of 2001, most Americans were still not concerned with obesity, were less likely to support most obesity-related policies such as taxing snack foods, and did not approve of treating obesity as a physical disability. Most Americans viewed obesity primarily as a case of individual moral failure rather than the result of the food environment or genetics (e.g., Kinder 1998).

To say American’s are obese and are not aware of the fact that they are overweight and obese is a complete misconception. Being in the fitness field and dealing with people who are overweight and obese, I can honestly say that Americans have more knowledge about nutrition more than any other nation in the world. We know what is nutritious and we know what is not nutritious, the real problem we have is our lack of self control when it comes to eating and portion control. Overall here in the United States, food is for the most part affordable; we are the country of super sizing. We want everything super sized, from our cars to our food that we eat. Commercials about unhealthy food are consistently being played on the radio and on the television. Fast food chains like Burger King, McDonalds and Wendy’s are a few of the ones who take advantage of showing commercial to reach out to the people. They all have very “catchy” slogans i.e. “eat great even late”, “our bacon cheeseburger can beat up other burgers”, and “ MMMmmmMMM Good!” According to Oliver and Lee, if obesity is seen as environmental in origin, then there should be greater support for policies that restrict food advertising and distribution. If obesity is understood to result from individual moral failure, then there should be little support for obesity target policies, particularly those that would come at the expense of the general population.

In the second article “Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic?” by W. Wayt Gibbs. He questions the actual facts of these researchers and scholars on what they write about obesity. The independent variables are the nonconforming researchers indict government and medical authorities in addition to the media of misleading the public about the health consequences of rising body weights. The dependent variables are the inflation of claims and unclear statistics on the consequences of our increasing weights and ignored the difficult health reality linked with being fat. Gibbs claims that by exaggerating the risks of fat and the feasibility of weight loss, Campos and Oliver claim, the CDC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization inadvertently perpetuate stigma, encourage unbalanced diets and, perhaps, even exacerbate weight gain. "The most perverse irony is that we may be creating a disease simply by labeling it as such," Campos states.

Gibbs, also states that Medical researchers tend to cast the expansion of waistlines as an impending disaster "because it inflates their stature and allows them to get more research grants. Government health agencies wield it as a rationale for their budget allocations," Oliver writes. (The National Institutes of Health increased its funding for obesity research by 10 percent in 2005, to $440 million.) "Weight-loss companies and surgeons employ it to get their services covered by insurance," he continues. "And the pharmaceutical industry uses it to justify new drugs." The research by Gibbs is a very interesting but biased research. He only focuses on the negative aspects of the researchers work and not the positive outcome that comes from it. If what he claims is true and whatever the researchers are doing is misleading the public so that they could receive grants from major corporations, it still does not help the fact that Americans are still getting fat and obesity is still a serious epidemic here in the Unite States.

The third article is “Annual Deaths Attributable to Obesity in the United States”

by David B. Allison, PhD; Kevin R. Fontaine, PhD; JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH; June Stevens, PhD; Theodore B. VanItallie, MD . The independent variable is to estimate the number of deaths, annually, attributable to obesity among US adults. The dependent variable is the estimated number of annual deaths attributable to obesity. The control variables are Adults, 18 years or older in 1991, classified by body mass index (kg/m2) as overweight