American Cultures Effect on Obesity

I’m sure you’ve heard by now about obesity rates in America and how they’ve been growing at an alarming rate.  In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, obesity rates for adults and children ages 6-19 have almost doubled in the last fifteen years making the United States the most overweight country in the world.

Several factors in our modern US society can be blamed for helping to increase the waist line of America.  The first and most obvious factor is fast food restaurants.  Did you know that there are over 200,000 fast food restaurants?  That averages out to be almost one restaurant per 1,000 people in the country.  Most of these restaurants offer a strong mix of fatty and fried foods and very limited offerings of fruits and vegetables.  Secondly, we have celebrity cooks teaching us how to cook everything with butter, and which restaurants have the best eating contests, which leads to another cultural factor, portion sizes at restaurants.  Which, according to David Zinczenko, the Editor-in-Chief at Men’s Health Magazine and the author of “Eat This Not That”, are 2-5 times larger than the recommended serving size.

Solutions:

For kids: Michelle Obama’s “Let’s move” campaign is targeting childhood obesity.  It is an initiative geared toward sharing knowledge and teaching good lifestyle choices at an early age so the kids that are born today will grow up healthier.

For adults: Eating right and exercise is the healthiest way to lose weight, but sometimes that’s not enough.  Certain cases of obesity are eligible for bariatric surgery.  Bariatric surgery is a weight-loss surgery performed on people who are obese.  There are a few different weight-loss procedures available at FirstHealth such as Roux-en Y Divided Gastric Bypass, Adjustable Gastric Band, and Gastric sleeve procedures.  To see if you are a candidate for weight-loss surgery click here.