Obesity in the Us

Obesity is rising at an alarming rate in the United States. According to information from the CDC website, “Over the past decade, obesity has become recognized as a national health threat and a major public health challenge. In 2007--2008, based on measured weights and heights, approximately 72.5 million adults in the United States were obese. Obese adults are at increased risk for many serious health conditions, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and premature death.” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2009) These numbers are simply alarming and when you think about it from a medical standpoint since this means that 33.8% of adults are obese in the United States, that’s one out of every three people. In my opinion the biggest contributor to obesity in the United States is processed foods. Processed foods are cheaper for companies to produce than whole foods and contain many ingredients that may be harmful to you. The introduction of high-fructose corn syrup coincides with the increase of obesity in the United States.

With advances in technology came a whole list of new ingredients we could put in our food that would mimic flavors and textures of the foods we were designed to eat. This is a very convenient thing for the food industry in the United States since Americans eat about 30% more packaged foods than we do whole foods. There are however benefits to processed foods such as preventing diseases and bacteria from infesting the food we eat. While this is true, there are many other ingredients in processed foods that are added for the sole purpose of saving their company money, regardless of its effect on nutritional value. I think that people need to be more aware of the things they are consuming every day and make an effort to sustain the food cycle instead of buying packaged items every day.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was introduced in 1970 to the United States...