Did you know that 31 percent of the population is obese in the United States? (USA today newspaper). In these days obesity has been reaching epidemic proportions; As a result, health problems have increased rapidly. Obesity is a medical condition characterized by storage of excess body fat, and it is associated with a variety of physiological problems such as, diabetes, hypertension disease, stroke, arthritis, and some forms of cancer (Heitmann, 1990). There are many causes that can generate obesity in children, men and women of different ages.
As first cause, many people think obesity is caused by eating too much junk food. Actually, they are right but, the biological factor is when a person consumes more calories than the body needs, the body stores those additional calories as fat. Therefore, that causes weight gain, and it makes serious problems to the person’s health. Sodas, snacks, chocolate bars, candy, hamburgers and hot dogs are usually junk food. This type of food is now more popular than vegetables, fruits and rice since fast-food restaurants increased their publicity and customers in the last few years. For example, restaurants such as McDonalds, Burger king, Taco bell and Wendy’s have increased their publicity and their quantity using television, radio, newspapers and magazines making these restaurants omnipresent around the whole world. Moreover, the publicity of these restaurants is made especially for the youth audience so they always want to go these fast-food restaurants. In addition, the people who consume more junk food are more often children and adolescents because they always like to eat at this places before mentioned.
Another cause of obesity in some cases would be by genetic characters between children and their parents. Obesity is partially determined by a person’s genetic makeup. Scientists are unclear about which genes affect human obesity. Moreover, one experiment published in 1986 followed children who were adopted shortly after birth. When the adoptees grew up, their weight were more similar to the biological parents than the adoptive parents. In other words, if a child has obese parents, the child must be obese too, but this doesn’t always happens. Anyway, the genetics in some cases is another factor that makes people obese since birth.
The third cause of obesity would be the lifestyles which have changed a lot in the last years. Thus, now more people spend less time devoted to exercise since the invention of many electronic appliances, such as computers, television, and videogames because most people prefer to just sit and watch TV, at the computer, or play videogames instead of practicing sports, riding bicycles, and walking around. As a result, this lack of physical activity has reduced the overall amount of energy expended in the course of these days, contributing to the development of obesity.
To summarize, being a “fattie” is not easy. Health problems are issues that obese people have to avoid with diets, doing body exercises, and trying to do not eat junk food. There are many people who do not care about their body, their fitness and their health, and they eat whatever they want, and they stay away from any body exercise. They may do whatever they want with their body, but I suggest to these people to do the recommendations before mentioned. Nevertheless, obesity is a disease which would be dangerous in the next years if we don’t keep in mind what we have learned