America is the land where everything is big. There are bigger opportunities, bigger houses, bigger cars, and bigger people. So says Morgan Spurlock in his documentary entitled, Super Size Me (2004). The documentary talks about how obesity is affected by fast food chains, specifically McDonalds. Spurlock embarked on an extreme experiment wherein he ate nothing but McDonalds’ products every single meal for thirty days. The experiment left him with more pounds than he began with—and more health problems to deal with.
As extreme as the experiment may seem, it jolted America out of its comfort zone and made people ask the reality of obesity in the country. Most Americans enjoy the luxury of fast foods, so did what Spurlock explore in his documentary something they should be alarmed about? Is there really an obesity epidemic in the United States of America?
As shocking as it may sound, most of Spurlock’s data were accurate. It is true that America is the fattest nation in the world, with one obese American in every four citizens. Obesity is the second highest cause of death within the country next to smoking. Obesity comes with other serious health implications such as heart diseases, liver and lung complications, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, among many others. No wonder obesity kills so many Americans: With complications as extreme as the ones mentioned above, it implies that many find it hard to stay away from food.
Obesity is often described as an illness inflicted upon a person who eats too much. As a result of this activity, the person’s body mass index (BMI) exceeds a person’s ideal weight by at least 20 percent. The BMI must be computed after putting into consideration a person’s height, weight, age, sex, and build. Aside from this, the BMI is relative to one’s height and weight, and it can determine the amount of body fat a person has. According to Medicine Net, Inc. (2009), an obese person could be a result of genetics and behavioral factors.
This information was backed up by the study conducted by medical doctors Forey, Johnson, and Tyler (2007) in their paper for the American Journal of Therapeutics. They mentioned that obesity is “one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the country,” with 65% of the adults and 34% of the children who are overweight or obese (p. 423). There are numerous approaches used to manage obesity, but they were to no avail. They discovered that the following are the aftermaths of obesity: Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, and a number of cancers (Forey et al., 2007).
Meanwhile, medical doctor Rothman (2009) wrote that studies show that the prevalence of obesity is increasing in the United States. He further emphasized that obesity brings about morbidity, mortality, and additional costs to the health care system. As stated by Bray and Champagne on his paper, “obesity is a chronic, relapsing, stigmatized, neurochemical disease” (cited in Rothman, 2009, n.p.).
Now one has a clear idea of what obesity is. The question is, if obesity is derived from eating too much and having too much body fat in a person’s body, why are the people who are inflicted with the illness unable to stop themselves from overeating?
The answer lies with a point raised by several readings, including the opinion of medical doctors Forey and colleagues (2007)—that the fast foods served to Americans daily were addicting. How addicting could fast foods be? For his documentary Super Size Me, Director Morgan Spurlock experienced nausea, and at times, he felt extremely depressed, although the day was going on fine. After eating his McMeal for the day, however, he would suddenly feel happy and excited again. His doctors advised him to stop the experiment because he was causing damage to his liver and in general, to his body, and his girlfriend even commented on the change in his sexual behavior.
This paper will try to answer why Americans are prone to obesity. What makes Americans vulnerable to obesity? Why are there more obese people in America than in other nations? The answer could be very obvious; the constant factor of all the obese Americans is just one thing: They all reside within the same country.
This paper will be entitled Obesity and Richness: Effects of Socioeconomic Status to Obesity in the United States. This will determine if there is any relationship between obesity and the socioeconomic status of a person. This will also establish if culture plays any role with an obese person’s life.
This study intends to answer the question on the relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status in the United States. Specifically, it aims to answer the following questions:
- Which age bracket in the United States has the highest percentage of obese people?
- What factors contribute to make a person obese?
- For those persons who are not obese, what is their secret to maintaining their body weight?
- How does America’s culture and socioeconomic status contribute to obesity?
The objectives of these questions are to find out what triggers obesity among the citizens of the United States of America, and what is the relationship between the socioeconomic statuses of people with obesity. Another objective is to determine the method being used by those who are not obese but are in the same socioeconomic status with those who are obese with regard to how they maintain their body weight. Lastly, this study aims to understand the relationship between the American culture, and how it is related to obesity.
Obesity claims many lives yearly in the United States of America. This is very disheartening, seeing as obesity is a disease that can easily be prevented. With proper motivation and incentives, the number of obese Americans can be lessened dramatically.
The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of socioeconomic status when it comes to obesity. The relationship between obesity and American culture will also be explored and analyzed. This will be done in order to lessen the number of obese Americans and to alleviate the country from its label of being the fattest nation in the world.
In a cohort study that will determine the long-time effects of obesity in obese people and in the non-obese population of the United States of America, how does one part of the population maintain its weight, while the other is powerless to stop the weight from accumulating?
The non-obese population of the United States of America is able to maintain their weight by exercising and eating properly.
The independent variable in this study will be the obese people in the United States of America. The dependent variable will be the American culture, and the intervening variable will be the socioeconomic status of the people.
This study will focus on obese people in the United States of America. There will be four points to be examined in this paper, which will be: obese Americans and the age bracket wherein obesity is most rampant, what factors contribute to a person’s being obese, how the non-obese population maintains its weight, and how the socioeconomic status and the American culture contribute to the obesity rate.
The study will talk about obesity in the United States and will not include obesity in other countries. It will only take into consideration the obese people whose lifestyle is affected by the American culture. The accounts of interviewed obese people will also use as a basis of the general opinion on obesity. The study will not provide solutions to obesity, complications, and other problems relating to the illness, but would instead determine the factors that would explain why obesity is out of control in the United States. This will also not focus on a particular age bracket, but would rather tackle obesity in a general sense.