Speech-Alex Cooper

           Health issues caused by being overweight or obese are the leading cause of death. Not cancer, not accidents, not Alzheimer’s, but obesity, something preventable. I am not pretending to have all the answers of how to cure obesity, but I do know that something must be done about it, and that something cannot be blaming the fast food companies. They may be part of the reason but they are by no means the sole one. People think that if the fast food companies are taken down the problem of obesity will magically be solved, but the fact of the matter is that if people want to eat that kind of food they will find somewhere to get it whether that be in a grocery store or even a gas station.

            I lost my father to cancer during freshman year. To know that something as preventable as obesity is the leading cause of death over something as unpreventable as cancer is heartbreaking to me. People need to have their eyes opened to the very serious problem that is occurring all over the US and the world. According to the National Institutes of Health(NIH) obesity is most often caused by the lack of energy balance, which essentially means the energy in, does not equal the energy out. This technically means that you could eat fast food all the time as long as you work the energy you take in, off instead of sitting around and watching TV. So while we may be able to blame the food companies that make these unhealthy meals we must also blame our inactive lifestyles. This can be seen in the documentary Super Size Me where a healthy man goes on a McDonald’s only binge in order to see the unhealthy effects on his body. While the results of how the food effected his body were eye-opening you must also take into account the fact of how very extreme this experiment was. All Spurlock ate was McDonalds three times a day every day for a month. He also had several rules, he had to have every item at least once, if the employee asked him if he wanted a supersize he had to say yes, and no working out. To clarify a super size, which McDonalds no longer offers, was a size larger than a large which they offered for drinks and fries.

            The last rule which was no working out, obviously made Spurlock’s energy coming in and the energy coming out be out of balance, one of the leading causes of obesity. Also the results are skewed because while people may eat out a lot I don’t think they eat out three times a day every day. Now I get It, we don’t always have time to go home and have dinner, especially us teens with school, extracurriculars, then homework sometimes it is just easiest to run out and grab a quick bite to eat. But people also overlook the healthy choices fast food offers. If you have to go eat fast food you can get a salad and have water instead of soda and I know some of you out there are saying that even the salads are unhealthy but I can assure you they are healthier than a cheeseburger and fries. And if you have time to complain about how unhealthy fast food options are you have time to go home and cook a healthy meal. You cannot blame your weight on everyone else because when it all comes down to it your weight is in your hands.

            One of the real problems of obesity is that people don’t realize how bad it really is like smoking for example. Everyone knows that smoking can cause lung cancer but not everyone knows that obesity can cause heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death, according to the Center for Disease Control(CDC). These statistics need to not only be made available to the public, which they are, but need to be shoved down the public’s throat. People need to understand how horrible the effects can be on your body from being overweight.

            One solution I can offer is to make the healthier options not be so expensive. I don’t know how to do this but I am sure someone out there can figure out a way. The CDC reports findings that poorer people tend to be more overweight and this can only be because they cannot afford the healthy options. Fresh fruits and vegetables and organic food items can be up to four times as costly as frozen or canned options. And while I am all for finding cures for cancer, I think we should also be working hard towards solving obesity especially considering that according to the CDC obesity effects 35 percent of adults and 17 percent of kids from 2-19 and it is the top preventable cause of death in the United States.

Works Cited

"Childhood Obesity Facts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 Sept. 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html>.

"What Causes Overweight and Obesity?" - NHLBI, NIH. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/obe/causes>.

"Super Size Me." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/>.

"Obesity and Overweight." WHO. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/>.