How Fast-Food is Changing the World?

There has been an exponential rise in the number of obese individuals especially in developed nations like United States and United Kingdom. Currently, obesity has become a public health problem in most nations and studies have shown that this could be attributed to an increase in calorie intake coupled with lack of adequate physical activity. The increased calorie intake links to fast food restaurants that offer inexpensive, convenient and good tasting food. Today, more than 160,000 fast food restaurants feed more than 50 million Americans each and every day, generating sales of more than 0 billion annually.

Fast food will not make you overweight or obese overnight, but it is important that you don't have it on a regular basis. Many meals have added sugars, are high in sodium, saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. The American Heart Association suggests only eating 100 to 150 calories of added sugar a day and recommend adults eat no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. A single drink in a fast-food restaurant may hold well over 140 calories of sugar and one meal could have half of your days' worth of sodium.

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Too much processed food can have a negative affect on almost all systems in the body that keep us alive.

More than 2 in 3 adults in the United States are considered overweight or obese but fast-foods affect children and youth often worse than adults. This is because most of the promoting is targeted towards children and there is a sustained pattern of eating fast foods and eating out.

Companies not only have low prices on their food, but the food they sell has low nutritional value, and they undeniably spend billions of dollars for the sake of being strongly advertised and known by the public all over the globe. Results in a study show that "A ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3 to 11 in a fixed population by 18 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 14 percent".

In addition to promotions, these restaurants want to entice kids and young adults in every way possible. For example, McDonald's regularly offers special meals for kids such as Happy Meals made up of chicken nuggets or a hamburger along with a toy inside. Adults and kids are frequently encouraged to size up on their meal, the more people that help these promotions, the more it will increase. Also, people are going to be most tempted to eat and eat more, and eventually become addicted to it. Addiction is said to be caused by the additives and preservatives found in those types of meals since there is a great deal of food engineering done to fast food products. These techniques normally take away the nutritional value of the food. Consequently, consuming these particular meals that contain a very high caloric content will result to being overweight.

Many people will argue that no one is forcing the citizens to eat the fast food which is true. However, many people only have the option of fast food because they might work late, and because there might not be any alternatives to the fast food places. Fast food has caused many problems in the world, specifically in the U.S. with obesity. People feel that they should blame fast food companies for their unhealthy choices. Consumers are 100% responsible to blame for obesity due to eating fast food. People have their own free will to do whatever they choose. Many people also try to say that child obesity is a direct result of fast food companies advertising to them, but that's still not true. Parents are responsible for what their children eat because children don't fully understand the idea of healthy eating. Although there is a lack of accessibility to healthier options, people can make the effort to buy a meal from a health-foods store rather than from a fast-food's restaurant. These companies don't force anyone to do anything.

Although it may be hard to resist inexpensive, convenient and good tasting food that is located everywhere, that's when people have to stop themselves and think about what's the best choice for them and their body. These companies should be giving their consumers healthier, less expensive options alongside their cheap fast food options. This significant increase in obesity rate is really alarming and frightening. People by now, should start reforming their lifestyles and refrain from consuming anything from fast foods too much. At the end of the day, nothing will be more important than our health, so we should really value and give importance to it, because surely, people with good health are guaranteed to have the best opportunities in life.