Fast Food and Obese Kids

It is believed by many people that fast food has nothing to do with the fattening of our children today. Though, evidence shows that these restaurants are a huge factor in child obesity, the blame is being put on other things as well. As revealed in my previous posts, fast food provides families with not only convenience but also health issues, and children are the main targets. Parents play a big role in making their kids obese simply because they are the ones taking the kids to the food and a giving choice in what they want to eat. Either you can eat a healthy home cooked meal where all of the proper nutrients will be provided or you can eat Mickey D’s or Burger King where you get a toy and fattening food that causes clogged arteries, high cholesterol, and unhealthy weight gain. After researching this topic numerous times, I came up with the conclusion that parents are easier to blame because the kids are theirs and they have an option to cook or take the lazy route to a fast food restaurant. This is true but also unfair because yes, the parents are taking their kids to these restaurants, but they aren’t providing the food. The restaurants slide through the loop holes and get away with taking responsibility for their actions because they are a business and have to make their money however they can no matter who they harm or kill in the process. Some commented that “the occasion cheeseburger” doesn’t cause obesity or because these restaurants offer “fruit and milk instead of Coke and fries”, they should be off the hook. This is absolutely wrong. Yes, these things are being offered, but they are not being advertised in the way that the Big Mac or Whopper is, and the parents aren’t ordering it. One also used the excuse that “Parents are busy!” This is may be true but if you are so busy that you are neglecting your child’s health due to laziness, being tired, and convenience then maybe you shouldn’t have a child at all. I believe that when the health of children becomes the first priority of families and businesses then we will become a much more healthier world and the generations to come will not be as fat.

Eating Ethically

In conclusion, the fast food industry is manipulating the public; they give us inferior products and hide behind a curtain of mystery. Their products can lead to heart disease, obesity, and diabetes and aren’t these consequences that deserve to be kept in check?

If we can put tabs on alcohol and cigarettes, I can feel comfortable advocating control over fast food. In addition to this, the government should adjust subsidies on corn and perhaps provide incentives to organic farmers and local grocers. We need to discourage this fast-food mentality that gets applied to everything; a mentality that promotes mega-marts, preservatives, and homogeneous lifestyles. It endangers our mentality and our bodies.

I want to applaud the media for bringing these issues to light. Documentaries like Food, Inc., Supersize Me, and Fast Food Nation bring issues like this to light. However, it’s still not enough. The media has a responsibility to shine the light on these issues; they need to give the public the information to make an informed decision.

Spending a few more dollars on dinner can make such a huge difference. It’s a small commitment that provides a healthier lifestyle and benefits the planet and global community. If we all just ate a little less meat and replaced the meat that we do eat with a higher quality, free-range, grass fed alternative, we could take a huge step forward in regards to the environment. To be honest, it’s a lot easier than recycling.

Fast Food and Obese Kids

As explained in my first blog post, fast food has been targeted as being the cause of obesity in society's children for a while now. Though lawsuits against McDonald's and other restaurants have not been successful, they still prove that these places have a big part in this horrible act of obesity in our kids. No the "occasional cheeseburger" is not the cause of obesity in children, but these meals are not occasional anymore. It is becoming their everyday dinner. The process of these meals went from Kid’s Meals to Big Kid's Meals to Value Meals. This goes to show that our children are not even getting full off of “normal kid” servings anymore. An article by Vincent Iannelli, M.D. entitled Childhood Obesity: Who's To Blame explains how fast food plays a big part in children's obesity, but tells how there are others involved. This second party being the family or parents. "Busy and cash-strapped families increasingly rely on take-out food for family dinners," which proves the laziness of the parents. Jennie Murphy, in the article The Super-sizing of America: Are Fast Food chains to Blame for the Nation's Obesity?, tells how these fast food restaurants are "facing fierce competition for customer loyalty" so, they will basically do whatever is necessary to keep the customers coming, no matter the consequence; this consequence results in fat kids. Murphy also said that "the portions served by fast food chains and other restaurants are far larger than the recommended portion size for most foods." So, not only are they consuming unhealthy food, but also large portions of it.

Eating Ethically

Vegetarianism cannot possibly fix our environment, but it’s the easiest and most effective commitment an individual can make. Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist, and Pamela Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, state that “if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.”

By reducing consumption of meat or abstaining from it entirely, an individual reduces water pollution caused by the cattle and their waste reservoirs and air pollution caused by both the cattle’s’ carbon and methane emissions and the transportation of the meat.

Over seventy percent of the grain grown in the country is used to fuel feedlots. Meat could be considered a weak investment in food production as they are very inefficient. It takes sixteen pounds of grain to grow—let’s admit it, you can hardly call it farming or raising, anymore—one pound of meat. It takes five pounds of wild fish to grow one pound of salmon (and an inferior salmon, at that!). “According to the USDA and the United Nations, using an acre of land to raise cattle for slaughter yields 20 pounds of usable protein. That same acre would yield 356 pounds of protein if soybeans were grown instead”[sic]more than 17 times as much!”

Imaging what we could do with all the grain, land, and water we’d save if we just committed to spending a little more time on dinner—if we just brought ethics to the table.

It’s cheaper to grab a burger and fries on your way home, but it shouldn’t be. Government subsidies favor corn and wheat (both used heavily on feedlots) so they can be sold below production costs and fruit and vegetable farmers aren’t united enough to even ask for government subsidy. If we were to reduce the amount of money given to grain and corn farmers, we could reduce the cost of produce—and supply nutritious food for the poor — and increase the price of “junk food” and meat.

Eathing Ethically

I have been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for almost fifteen years. I abstain from eating meat, although I’ll eat eggs, milk, and the products of animals, generally. Oddly, enough, I made this decision when I was around four years old—obviously, it wasn’t a logical one, at the time, but I found that as I grew older, I created reasons for myself after the fact; they weren’t half bad.

Going vegetarian is pretty much the single greatest impact you can make for the sake of the environment. Methane is over twenty times as powerful as any other greenhouse gas; it’s responsible for more global warming than all other greenhouse gases combined. Concentrations of animal waste and cattle farms contribute over one hundred million tons of methane per year. Water tables are polluted from the nitrogen in the cattle’s urine. The nitrates could contaminate wells and drinking water. An individual cow wouldn’t contribute anything too terribly serious; however, farming has grown from a small-scale and personal experience into a giant process. We’ve taken America’s fast-food mentality and applied it to a noble profession. In our attempts to make food available cheaper and faster, we’ve neglected some pretty serious long term effects. We’ve become obsessed with ‘the system’; even when it’s flawed!

America’s drive-through ideals have skewed how we view food. Why do we insist on staying in the dark when it comes to the things we eat? We’ll take whatever processed, mutilated, and treated meat is available in our closest mega-mart. We’re given the illusion of choice when it comes down for our weekly trip to the supermarket. As of 2005, the top four meat processing companies produced 84% of the beef available to the public. Beef Production provides hamburger filler to over 80% of the country. Tyson Foods is the second largest producer of meat in the world. Smithfield Foods controls over a quarter of the pork market. We’re tricked into thinking that we could have the world in our shopping carts, but in reality, we’re victims to whatever these companies want to feed us. We’ve turned honest work into an assembly line; quality is defined by conformity. These companies are more manipulative than we think; to keep costs in check, Tyson frequently advertises on Mexican radio and in newspapers. They offer to bus illegal immigrants to and from the plants in exchange for cheap labor. When it’s time to deal out punishments, the corporation walks away with clean hands. The ones doing the work are the ones left holding the bag and facing the law. Beef Production soaks their beef filler with ammonia in order to cleanse it. What kind of condition was it in, in the first place, to require such extensive measures? Rather than spend the money to find the problem as to why their meat is so riddled with E. coli and salmonella, they just add steps to the process so they can keep the system going.

I’m not saying that these are evil Mega-corporations and we should form a lynch mob or anything. If the surgeon general and the FDA require tobacco companies to label cigarettes as dangerous carcinogens, is it really too much to ask for some regulation regarding something as vital as our food? I’m all for the individual’s responsibility to educate themselves, but it’s undeniable that the conditions regarding our food are kept, for the most part, in the dark. If we’re staying for dinner, is it really too much to ask to just have a peek in the kitchen?

Fast Food and Obese Kids

Is it not obvious that the children of today are getting bigger and bigger? I blame it on fast food. Some may use the convenience of it as an excuse, but its simple laziness on the parents. A child may be asked, “What do you want for dinner?” and they may simply reply, “Chicken Nuggets or Cheeseburger!” This same child may very well be asked would they rather have vegetables, fruit, or McDonald's and Burger King and the answer would not be the "politically healthy" choice. This is becoming a big issue because fast food is making our children obese and unhealthy and no one is trying to do anything about it. A child can only eat what is allowed to them and it's as simple as that. Some kids have gotten so comfortable with their poor eating that they throw tantrums and fits because they cannot have their chicken nuggets, barbeque sauce, and little toy. This is just to show how dangerous it as become to our kids, not only to health, but behavior as well. Jeanie Learche Davis shows in her article Fast Food Creates Fat Kids that a study provides evidence that on average, one-third of the nation’s children eat fast food, but not only are they eating unhealthy food, they eat more of everything else, too. Kids between the ages of 4 and 8 eat 6% more food than children who do not eat fast food and kids between the ages of 10 and 14 eat 17% more food. I believe that the fatness of these kids is the parents’ fault. They have become so lazy in their parenting that instead of cooking their child a healthy meal, at these young ages, they would rather take them to McDonald’s or Burger King and provide them with an unhealthy Kid’s Meal. Not only have these fast food restaurants sucked our poor children and parents in with toys and other gadgets, but they have upped their menus to Mighty Kids and Big Kids Meals which give them an even bigger dose of clogged arteries, high cholesterol and weight gain. A doctor, Kelly D. Brownwell, PhD, also stated in an editorial that "the food industry claims that their products are not the primary cause of obesity..." and that "the nation's children deserve protection from damaging forces." We have become captive to the enslavement of these fast food restaurants and its making our kids fat. At this point we need to just learn to tell the kids “No you cannot have this or that, I’m cooking and you are going to eat it.” Period. Until they become adults, and are able to make their own decisions, parents should provide their child with a fair share of healthy food, exercise, and a limited amount of snacks.