argumentative essay on obesity in america

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“Work Cited”

“Breastfed Babies Less Likely to Have Obesity.” AAP.org, 24 Sept. 2018, https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Breastfed-Babies-Less-Likely-to-Have-Obesity.aspx.
“Childhood Obesity.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 5 Dec. 2018, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/childhood-obesity/symptoms-causes/syc-20354827.
“Diabetes Overview.” Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, https://www.diabetes.org/diabetes
Lakshman, Rajalakshmi E., et al. “Childhood Obesity.” Circulation, vol. 126, no. 14, 2012, pp. 1770–1779.
P.H. Wilding, John. “Causes of Obesity.” Practical Diabetes International, vol. 18, no. 8, 2001, pp. 288–292.
“Type 2 Diabetes.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 9 Jan. 2019, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20351193.
Welcome, Anna. “Definition of Obesity.” Obesity Medicine Association, Obesity Medicine Association, 29 Aug. 2019, https://obesitymedicine.org/definition-of-obesity/.

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The Origins of the Obesity Epidemic in the USA–Lessons for Today

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The obesity epidemic appeared in the USA in 1976–1980 and then spread across Westernized countries. This paper examines the most likely causes of the epidemic in the USA. An explanation must be consistent with the emergence of the epidemic in both genders and in all age groups and ethnicities at about the same time, and with a steady rise in the prevalence of obesity until at least 2016. The cause is closely related to changes in the American diet. There is little association with changes in the intake of fat and carbohydrate. This paper presents the opinion that the factor most closely linked to the epidemic is ultra-processed foods (UPFs) (i.e., foods with a high content of calories, salt, sugar, and fat but with very little whole foods). Of particular importance is sugar intake, especially sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). There is strong evidence that consumption of SSBs leads to higher energy intake and more weight gain. A similar pattern is also seen with other UPFs. Factors that probably contributed to the increased intake of UPFs include their relatively low price and the increased popularity of fast-food restaurants. Other related topics discussed include: (1) the possible importance of Farm Bills implemented by the US Department of Agriculture; (2) areas where further research is needed; (3) health hazards linked to UPFs; and (4) the need for public health measures to reduce intake of UPFs.

1. Introduction

Many thousands of research studies have been carried out on the causes of obesity and effective forms of treatment [ 1 , 2 ]. However, there is still a great deal to be learned. Starting around 1980, an obesity epidemic emerged that spread across the Western world. There has been much speculation as to the true cause of this epidemic but, as yet, no explanation has gained wide acceptance. This paper examines the evidence in an attempt to identify which factors are most likely to be responsible. The major focus is on the USA. The findings are potentially important as by identifying the major factors that triggered the obesity epidemic, this may suggest how obesity can be prevented.

2. Emergence of the Epidemic

The obesity epidemic emerged in Westernized countries during the 1980s [ 3 , 4 ]. Our best evidence is that this major event started a few years earlier in the USA, namely in 1976–1980 [ 5 , 6 ]. Obesity is defined as a BMI ≥ 30. There was only a small rise (approximately 0.5%) in the prevalence of obesity among American adults in the years 1971–1974 to 1976–1980, but this was followed by a rapid rise that continued for at least 20 years. The prevalence of obesity in American adults (age 20–74, both genders) rose from 15.0% in 1976–1980, to 23.3% in 1988–1994, and to 30.9% in 1999–2000. What is especially noteworthy is that this fast-rising prevalence among American adults was similar in all age groups, in both men and women, and in all major ethnic groups including Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans [ 6 ]. This rise in the prevalence of obesity continued in both genders during the period 1999 to 2016 [ 7 ].

The data from the USA come from regular surveys that assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children. These surveys are known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). They are carried out by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

3. Possible Causes of the Epidemic

Based on the information stated above, an explanation for the epidemic must be consistent with the following:

The appearance of the epidemic in the USA in the years 1976–1980;
Its appearance in both genders and in all age groups and ethnicities at about the same time;
A steady increase in the prevalence of obesity that continued until at least 2016.

Where information was needed on particular topics, a literature search was carried out using the PubMed database. As this paper is an opinion piece rather than a review, I have been very selective regarding what information is included or excluded.

Several factors can be immediately eliminated as they do not act across the population in a mere five years or so. This includes genetics and epigenetics. The latter factors are certainly of much relevance in helping to explain why one person develops obesity but not another person who leads a similar lifestyle. However, the distribution of these factors is fairly stable across the population and for that reason cannot explain the sudden emergence of the obesity epidemic. Similarly, we can exclude maternal factors that act before birth or in early infancy. As with genetics these factors are certainly relevant in explaining person-to-person variation in the development of obesity. However, these factors cannot explain why the obesity epidemic appeared in different age groups at around the same time.

A reduction in physical activity seems to have played, at most, only a minor role [ 3 ]. Manual labor has steadily decreased in the USA over many decades. A significant decrease was seen during the 1960s and 1970s, but this shows only a weak association with the rapid increase in obesity that started in the late 1970s [ 3 ]. Moreover, the magnitude of the decrease in work-related physical activity is too small to have been an important factor in the increase in obesity. Another argument against a significant role for the decrease in work-related physical activity is that the rise in obesity was also seen among persons who were not of working age (i.e., those aged under 18 or over 65). Over the decades, the need for physical activity also steadily fell outside of work. In particular, the population had greater access to cars and public transport.

Finally, it is noteworthy that there is no evidence indicating a fall in leisure-time physical activity at around the time that the obesity epidemic started. Indeed, the late 1970s and 1980s was when exercise became more popular (e.g., jogging).

Obesity occurs when energy intake (food) is substantially higher than energy expenditure (in particular physical activity). The cause of the obesity epidemic must therefore be due to either an increase in energy intake from food or a decrease in physical activity (or a combination). As noted above it is unlikely that a decrease in physical activity played a significant role in the epidemic. From this, we can assume that the most likely explanation for the epidemic is changes in the American diet. A large body of evidence has linked the diet with body weight and risk of excess weight gain. Many changes have taken place in the American diet over the past several decades. We now explore how changes in the American diet may have led to the obesity epidemic.

3.1. Dietary Fat

A hypothesis that gained wide support during the 1970s was that the diets commonly eaten in the USA and across the Western world had an excessively high content of fat and that this played a major role in various chronic diseases of lifestyle. This hypothesis was extended to obesity. In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs translated this hypothesis into actual policy with the publication of Dietary Goals for the United States [ 8 , 9 ]. One of the recommendations in this report was that Americans should reduce the fat content of their diet. This advice was repeated in 1980 with the publication of the first edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans [ 10 ]. Recommendations for a reduced intake of fat steadily permeated to the general population [ 11 ]. The food industry responded by marketing such foods as lean meat and low-fat milk.

Despite these various actions it is unclear if there was an actual fall in fat intake after 1980. Findings from NHANES surveys (of 8600–10,000 persons) suggest that American adults reduced their fat intake as a proportion of energy during the years 1976–1980 to 1999–2000 (36.7% to 32.3% in men; 36.0% to 32.4% in women) [ 12 ]. However, there was a significant rise in energy intake at the same time. The net effect is that the quantity of fat in the diet appears to have risen slightly.

Another study used the findings from the Nationwide Food Consumption Survey (NFCS) of >10,000 American adults [ 13 , 14 ]. The data cover the period from 1977–1978 to 1987–1988. Fat intake as a proportion of energy fell from 41.0% to 36.6%. There was also a modest (approximately 4%) fall in energy intake. The net result is an approximate 14% fall in the quantity of fat in the diet. These findings must be viewed with some suspicion as they indicate that energy intake was falling while the prevalence of obesity was increasing.

The findings regarding changes in intake of fat and energy lack consistency between the above two studies. As the NFCS data may be unreliable, more reliance should be placed on the NHANES data. This suggests, therefore, that the fat intake of American adults was quite stable during the years 1976–1980 to 1999–2000. The findings from randomized controlled studies (RCTs) show that small changes in fat intake have little impact on body weight [ 15 ]. Taking these findings as a whole, we can conclude that there is, at most, only a very small relationship between changes in the fat content of the American diet and the appearance of the obesity epidemic.

As stated above the findings from NHANES indicate that there was a significant rise in energy intake at the same time as the fat intake of American adults was quite stable (1976–1980 to 1999–2000). This suggests that there was an increase in the quantity of carbohydrates in the diet. Many investigators have been quick to conclude that this increase in dietary carbohydrates was an important factor in the obesity epidemic [ 16 ]. However, that is a serious mistake as it ignores the major differences between different food sources of carbohydrates. When attention is turned away from the quantity of carbohydrate in the diet, and to the nature of the foods being eaten, the probable cause of the epidemic starts to emerge.

3.2. Sugar and Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Sugar intake in the USA was fairly stable in the 1970s but then rose sharply after 1978. Per capita intake of total caloric sweeteners was 124.6 pounds in 1978, 132.7 pounds in 1988, and 154.1 pounds in 1997 [ 17 ]. This indicates an increase of 36.7 g/day (147 kcal/day) between 1978 and 1997. The increase in energy intake is sufficiently high to explain the increase in the average weight of the population [ 18 ]. One important factor that brought about the growth in sugar intake was a major drop in the price of sugar that occurred after 1980 [ 19 ].

The above data refers to total caloric sweeteners. However, there was a large shift from sucrose to high-fructose corn syrup, but there is no hard evidence that this is a significant factor in the obesity epidemic [ 20 ].

Surveys of the American diet document a large rise in the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) during the time period 1977–1978 to 1994–1996 [ 21 ]. This accounts for much of the increase in sugar intake. During this time period the proportion of energy obtained from soft drinks increased from 4.1% to 7.0% at age 19–39 and from 1.9% to 4.0% at age 40–59.

RCTs and prospective cohort studies have generated strong evidence that consumption of SSBs leads to higher energy intake and more weight gain [ 22 , 23 ]. Findings from RCTs have reported that the addition of SSBs to the diet of adults leads to a 0.85 kg increase in body weight [ 22 ]. Findings from cohort studies indicate that an extra serving per day of SSB is associated with an increase in body weight in adults of around 0.12 to 0.22 kg [ 22 ]. This is probably also the case in the area of sugar intake in general; however, there are far fewer research studies [ 23 ]. This evidence strongly suggests that SSBs are a major factor responsible for the obesity epidemic.

3.3. Ultra-Processed Foods

SSBs are a type of food commonly referred to as ultra-processed foods (UPFs) [ 24 ]. UPFs are typically prepared from mostly cheap sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives. They are mostly high in calories, salt, sugar, and fat but contain minimal amounts of whole foods. As a result, they have a low content of dietary fiber, phytochemicals (for example, lutein, lycopene, and anthocyanins), and of various micronutrients, such as potassium, magnesium, and vitamin C. Examples of UPFs include white bread, sweetened breakfast cereals, cookies, savory snacks, cakes, candy, ice cream, margarine, sausages, and pizza.

There is impressive evidence that UPFs play a major role in the obesity epidemic [ 25 ]. The above-mentioned surveys of the American diet that documented a large rise in the consumption of SSBs during the time period 1977–1978 to 1994–1996 also revealed a similar increase in the intake of other UPFs [ 21 ]. The largest increases were seen for salty snacks and pizza. During this time period, the proportion of energy obtained from various types of UPFs in the age group 40–59 increased from 1.4% to 3.8% for salty snacks, from 0.5% to 1.7% for pizza, from 0.5% to 1.4% for candy, and from 1.2% to 1.6% for French fries.

The following RCT demonstrates the potential of UPFs to cause one to be overweight and obese [ 26 ]. Subjects were fed two nutritionally similar diets for 2 weeks. The diets differed only in their degree of processing: one comprised UPFs while the other was based on minimally processed foods. Subjects were instructed to consume as much or as little as desired. The UPF diet resulted in, on average, a 508 kcal/day higher energy intake than the other diet. It also resulted in a commensurate amount of weight gain (an average of 0.9 kg).

These findings are consistent with those from prospective cohort studies. The combined results of three cohort studies conducted on 121,000 men and women in the USA reported a positive association of weight change with intake of potato chips (a UPF) but a negative association with intake of several minimally processed foods, namely fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts [ 27 ]. Findings from cross-sectional studies (analyzed as part of a systematic review and meta-analysis) indicate that that a relatively high consumption of UPFs is associated with a 39% higher risk of overweight/obesity and of high waist circumference [ 28 ]. Another systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies also concluded that there is a strong association between the intake of UPFs and risk of overweight and obesity [ 29 ].

One factor that may have been driving the upward consumption of UPFs is the strong trend towards eating at fast-food restaurants. The surveys of the American diet that were discussed earlier reported that the proportion of energy in the American diet that was obtained from eating out, including at fast-food restaurants, went from 9.4% to 21.3% during the years 1977–1978 to 1994–1996 [ 19 ]. Fast-food restaurants may be of particular importance as most of the food sold there is UPF (e.g., burger, fries, and a cola drink at McDonald’s). Evidence from prospective cohort studies have reported that more frequent eating at these restaurants is associated with a greater increase in body weight and of waist circumference [ 30 ].

3.4. The Role of Farm Bills and Food Prices

Analyses of food prices has clearly shown that healthier diets cost significantly more than less healthy diets. For example, an international study compared the cost of healthy vs. less healthy food-based diet patterns. The researchers concluded that the top (most healthy) quantile cost $1.54 more per 2000 kcal (based on 2011 prices) [ 31 ]. It is well established that shoppers tend to buy less expensive foods. As UPFs are a feature of less healthy diets, shoppers will therefore frequently select these foods. These findings strongly indicate, therefore, that relatively low food prices encourage the general population to eat UPFs which, in turn, play a major role in obesity.

It has been suggested many times that a key event leading to the supply of large quantities of UPFs at relatively low prices was a major policy change by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. Farm Bills implemented by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) gave increased subsidies to farmers. This may have directly led to a large increase in the supply of agricultural products that food manufacturers then turned into UPFs which were sold at a relatively low price. This triggered and has sustained the obesity epidemic. This hypothesis has been the subject of much investigation, but no firm conclusions have been reached [ 31 , 32 ].

4. Research Challenges

The most plausible explanation for the obesity epidemic in the USA is that around 1978–1980 there was a major increase in the consumption of UPFs. However, this hypothesis is still far from proven. There is a need for further research in the following key areas:

The change in intake of different types of food in the American diet, especially after 1978. In particular, information is needed on the changing intake of different types of UPFs in different sections of the US population from the 1970s to the present;
The factors that explain the increase in intake of UPFs (e.g., subsidies given to farmers by the USDA, changing food prices, and trends in the number of meals purchased at fast-food restaurants);
Changes in energy intake across the population and whether this is consistent with increases in the prevalence of obesity;
Whether findings from the US population also explain the obesity epidemic that occurred in other Westernized countries;
How different types of UPFs affect energy intake and lead to weight gain. A RCT that investigated this was described earlier [ 26 ]. However, while highly informative, its duration was only 2 weeks;
The most effective means to reduce the prevalence of obesity by reducing intake of UPFs across the population;
To determine whether a diet with a low content of UPFs is effective in aiding weight loss.

5. A Brief Overview of Ultra-Processed Foods and Health

The evidence presented in this paper strongly suggests that UPFs are a major factor responsible for the obesity epidemic. However, the negative impact of UPFs on health extends well beyond obesity. Observational evidence has revealed a clear association between the intake of UPFs and several disorders including cancer [ 33 ], type 2 diabetes [ 34 ], cardiovascular disease [ 28 ], and depression [ 28 ]. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis of 40 prospective cohort studies concluded that high consumption of UPFs (comparing highest vs. lowest intake groups) is associated with a 29% higher all-cause mortality [ 35 ].

UPFs are certain to have a major negative impact on the nutritional status of American adults as they comprise an estimated 57.0% of energy intake whereas minimally processed foods represent only 27.4% [ 36 ]. These data are from the NHANES survey in 2017–2018. As mentioned earlier, this will inevitably result in the diet having a low content of dietary fiber, phytochemicals, and of various micronutrients.

6. Ultra-Processed Foods and Public Health: The Need for Serious Action

These findings compel the conclusion that priority must be given to efforts that will reduce the consumption of UPFs, both in the USA and internationally. One strategy is a health education approach. Nutrition advice is delivered to the general public in diverse ways. Of particular importance governments deliver nutrition advice by way of food guides. These need to explicitly emphasize the importance of reducing the intake of UPFs. Similarly, the addition of labels to the front of food packages may help shoppers make healthier food choices [ 37 ]. Warning labels is one design that shows much promise (e.g., warning shoppers that a food has a high content of sugar).

Unfortunately, much evidence clearly demonstrates that delivering nutrition advice to the population achieves only modest success. A much more effective strategy is one based on policies implemented by governments that impose regulations on various organizations including food companies [ 38 ]. For example, schools can be ordered to cease selling UPFs in vending machines. Similarly, the amount of UPFs in school meals should be minimized.

Manipulation of food price is another policy approach that has much potential. It is well established that an increase in price leads to a decrease in sales (and vice versa). This is known as price elasticity. Accordingly, taxes and subsidies can be used in order to achieve a desired effect on food consumption [ 39 , 40 , 41 ]. More specifically, the price of UPFs, especially sugar-rich foods, can be increased while the price of healthy foods, such as fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, can be reduced.

It is very probable that policies implemented by governments are not only more effective than those based on nutrition education, but they are also much more cost-effective. This strategy has a long history and has achieved great success. Prominent examples include providing the population with safe drinking water, the addition of various micronutrients to particular foods, and the removal of trans fatty acids from foods [ 39 ].

7. Conclusions

The evidence presented here supports the case that the large quantities of UPFs in the diet have played a dominant role in the obesity epidemic. While the main focus here has been on the situation in the USA, it seems highly likely that UPFs are also heavily involved in the epidemic of obesity that has spread across the Western world, starting around 1980. However, there are still many gaps in the evidence and much more research is therefore needed.

A high dietary intake of UPFs is closely associated with a range of damaging effects on health in addition to obesity. For that reason, dietary advice should emphasize a reduction in the intake of UPFs across the population. While health education, such as food guides and food labels, is a useful way to work towards that goal, much evidence indicates this strategy achieves only limited success. A more effective strategy is one based on policies and regulations implemented by governments. Examples of such policies include removing UPFs from school meals, increasing the price of SSBs by adding a tax, and using subsidies to reduce the price of fruit and vegetables.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

A photo of the ocean floor shows an autonomous reef structure surrounded by oceanic foliage and plants, fish and lichen. The cover line says "Can this box save coral reefs?"

Prevention, prevention, prevention.

Losing weight is hard to do.

In the U.S., only one in six adults who have dropped excess pounds actually keep off at least 10 percent of their original body weight. The reason: a mismatch between biology and environment. Our bodies are evolutionarily programmed to put on fat to ride out famine and preserve the excess by slowing metabolism and, more important, provoking hunger. People who have slimmed down and then regain their weight don’t lack willpower—their bodies are fighting them every inch of the way.

argumentative essay on obesity in america

This inborn predisposition to hold on to added weight reverberates down the life course. Few children are born obese, but once they become heavy, they are usually destined to be heavy adolescents and heavy adults. According to a 2016 study in the New England Journal of Medicine , approximately 90 percent of children with severe obesity will become obese adults with a BMI of 35 or higher. Heavy young adults are generally heavy in middle and old age. Obesity also jumps across generations; having a mother who is obese is one of the strongest predictors of obesity in children.

All of which means that preventing child obesity is key to stopping the epidemic. By the time weight piles up in adulthood, it is usually too late. Luckily, preventing obesity in children is easier than in adults, partly because the excess calories they absorb are minimal and can be adjusted by small changes in diet—substituting water, for example, for sugary fruit juices or soda.

Still, the bulk of the obesity problem—literally—is in adults. According to Frank Hu, chair of the Harvard Chan Department of Nutrition, “Most people gain weight during young and middle adulthood. The weight-gain trajectory is less than 1 pound per year, but it creeps up steadily from age 18 to age 55. During this time, people gain fat mass, not muscle mass. When they reach age 55 or so, they begin to lose their existing muscle mass and gain even more fat mass. That’s when all the metabolic problems appear: insulin resistance, high cholesterol, high blood pressure.”

Adds Walter Willett, Frederick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard Chan, “The first 5 pounds of weight gain at age 25—that’s the time to be taking action. Because someone is on a trajectory to end up being 30 pounds overweight by the time they’re age 50.”

The most realistic near-term public health goal, therefore, is not to reverse but rather to slow down the trend—and even this will require strong commitment from government at many levels. In May 2017, the Trump administration rolled back recently-enacted standards for school meals, delaying a rule to lower sodium and allowing waivers for regulations requiring cafeterias to serve foods rich in whole grains. If recent expansions in food entitlements and school meals are undermined, “It would be a ‘disaster,’ to use the president’s word,” says Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Obesity & Food Policy at the University of Connecticut. “The federal food programs are incredibly important, not just because of the food and money they provide families, but because supporting better nutrition in child care, schools, and the WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] program has created new social norms. We absolutely cannot undo the progress that we’ve made in helping this generation transition to a healthier diet.”

Get the science right.

It is impossible to prescribe solutions to obesity without reminding ourselves that nutrition scientists botched things decades ago and probably sent the epidemic into overdrive. Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. government and major professional groups recommended for the first time that people eat a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet. The advice was codified in 1977 with the first edition of The Dietary Goals for the United States , which aimed to cut diet-related conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. What ensued amounted to arguably the biggest public health experiment in U.S. history, and it backfired.

At the time, saturated fat and dietary cholesterol were believed to be the main factors responsible for cardiovascular disease—an oversimplified theory that ignored the fact that not all fats are created equal. Soon, the public health blitz against saturated fat became a war on all fat. In the American diet, fat calories plummeted and carb calories shot up.

“We can’t blame industry for this. It was a bandwagon effect in the scientific community, despite the lack of evidence—even with evidence to the contrary,” says Willett. “Farmers have known for thousands of years that if you put animals in a pen, don’t let them run around, and load them up with grains, they get fat. That’s basically what has been happening to people: We created the great American feedlot. And we added in sugar, coloring, and seductive promotion for low-fat junk food.”

Scientists now know that whole fruits and vegetables (other than potatoes), whole grains, high-quality proteins (such as from fish, chicken, beans, and nuts), and healthy plant oils (such as olive, peanut, or canola oil) are the foundations of a healthy diet.

But there is also a lot scientists don’t yet know. One unanswered question is why some people with obesity are spared the medical complications of excess weight. Another concerns the major mechanisms by which obesity ushers in disease. Although surplus body weight can itself directly cause problems—such as arthritis due to added load on joints, or breast cancer caused by hormones secreted by fat cells—in general, obesity triggers myriad biological processes. Many of the resulting conditions—such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s disease—are mediated by inflammation, in which the body’s immune response becomes damagingly self-perpetuating. In this sense, today’s food system is as inflammagenic as it is obesigenic.

Scientists also need to ferret out the nuanced effects of particular foods. For example, do fermented products—such as yogurt, tempeh, or sauerkraut—have beneficial properties? Some studies have found that yogurt protects against weight gain and diabetes, and suggest that healthy live bacteria (known as probiotics) may play a role. Other reports point to fruits being more protective than vegetables in weight control and diabetes prevention, although the types of fruits and vegetables make a difference.

A 2017 article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that substituting whole grains for refined grains led to a loss of nearly 100 calories a day—by speeding up metabolism, cutting the number of calories that the body hangs on to, and, more surprisingly, by changing the digestibility of other foods on the plate. That extra energy lost daily—by substituting, say, brown rice for white rice or barley for pita bread—was equivalent to a brisk 30-minute walk. One hundred calories a day, sustained over years, and multiplied by the population is one mathematical equivalent of the obesity epidemic.

A companion study found that adults who ate a whole-grain-rich diet developed healthier gut bacteria and improved immune responses. That particular foods alter the gut microbiome—the dense and vital community of bacteria and other microorganisms that work symbiotically with the body’s own digestive system—is another critical insight. The microbiome helps determine weight by controlling how our bodies extract calories and store fat in the liver, and the microbiomes of obese individuals are startlingly efficient at harvesting calories from food. [To learn more about Harvard Chan research on the gut microbiome, read “ Bugs in the System .”] The hormonal effects of sleep deprivation and stress—two epidemics concurrent and intertwined with the obesity trend—are other promising avenues of research.

And then there are the mystery factors. One recent hypothesis is that an agent known as adenovirus 36 partly accounts for our collective heft. A 2010 article in The Royal Society described a study in which researchers examined samples of more than 20,000 animals from eight species living with or around humans in industrialized nations, a menagerie that included macaques, chimpanzees, vervets, marmosets, lab mice and rats, feral rats, and domestic dogs and cats. Like their Homo sapiens counterparts, all of the study populations had gained weight over the past several decades—wild, domestic, and lab animals alike. The chance that this is a coincidence is, according to the scientists’ estimate, 1 in 10 million. The stumped authors surmise that viruses, gene expression changes, or “as-of-yet unidentified and/or poorly understood factors” are to blame.

Master the art of persuasion.

A 2015 paper in the American Journal of Public Health revealed the philosophical chasm that hampers America’s progress on obesity prevention. It found that 72 to 98 percent of obesity-related media reports emphasize personal responsibility for weight, compared with 40 percent of scientific papers.

A recent study by Drexel University researchers also quantified the political polarization around public health measures. From 1998 through 2013, Democrats voted in line with recommendations from the American Public Health Association 88.3 percent of the time, on average, while Republicans voted for the proposals just 21.3 percent of the time.

Clearly, we can’t count on bipartisan goodwill to stem the obesity crisis. But we can ask what kinds of messages appeal to politically divergent audiences. A stealth strategy may be to avoid even uttering the word “obesity.” On January 1 of this year, Philadelphia’s 1.5-cents-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened and diet beverages took effect. When Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney lobbied voters to approve the tax, his bid centered not on improving health—the unsuccessful pitch of his predecessor—but on raising $91 million annually for prekindergarten programs.

“That’s something lots of people care about and can get behind—it’s a feel-good policy, and it makes sense,” says psychologist Christina Roberto, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a former assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences and nutrition at Harvard Chan. The provision for taxing diet beverages was also shrewd, she adds, because it spread the tax’s pain; since wealthier people are more likely than less-affluent individuals to buy diet drinks, the tax could not be slapped with the label “regressive.”

But Roberto sees a larger lesson in the Philadelphia story. Public health messaging that appeals to values that transcend the individual is less fraught, less stigmatizing, and perhaps more effective. As she puts it, “It’s very different to hear the message, ‘Eat less red meat, help the planet’ versus ‘Eat less red meat, help yourself avoid saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.’”

Supermarket makeovers

Supermarket aisles are other places where public health can shuffle a deck stacked against healthy consumer choices.

With slim profit margins and 50,000-plus products on their shelves, grocery stores depend heavily on food manufacturers’ promotional incentives to make their bottom lines. “Manufacturers pay slotting fees to get their products on the shelf, and they pay promotion allowances: We’ll give you this much off a carton of Coke if you put it on sale for a certain price or if you put it on an end-of-aisle display,” says José Alvarez, former president and chief executive officer of Stop & Shop/Giant-Landover, now senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School. Such promotional payments, Alvarez adds, often exceed retailers’ net profits.

Healthy new products—like flash-frozen dinners prepared with heaps of vegetables and whole grains, and relatively little salt—can’t compete for prized shelf space against boxed mac and cheese or cloying breakfast cereals. One solution, says Alvarez, is for established consumer packaged goods companies to buy out what he calls the “hippie in the basement” firms that have whipped up more nutritious items. The behemoths could apply their production, marketing, and distribution prowess to the new offerings—and indeed, this has started to happen over the last five years.

Another approach is to make nutritious foods more convenient to eat. “We have all of these cooking shows and upscale food magazines, but most people don’t have the time or inclination—or the skills, quite frankly—to cook,” says Alvarez. “Instead, we should focus on creating high-quality, healthy, affordable prepared foods.”

An additional model is suggested by Jeff Dunn, a 20-year veteran of the soft drink industry and former president of Coca-Cola North America, who went on to become an advocate for fresh, healthy food. Dunn served as president and chief executive officer of Bolthouse Farms from 2008 to 2015, where he dramatically increased sales of baby carrots by using marketing techniques common in the junk food business. “We operated on the principles of the three 3 A’s: accessibility, availability, and affordability,” says Dunn. “That, by the way, is Coke’s more-than-70-year-old formula for success.”

Show them the money.

Obesity kills budgets. According to the Campaign to End Obesity, a collaboration of leaders from industry, academia, public health, and policymakers, annual U.S. health costs related to obesity approach $200 billion. In 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that nearly 20 percent of the rise in health care spending from 1987 to 2007 was linked to obesity. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that full-time workers in the U.S. who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million more days of work each year than do healthy employees—upward of $153 billion in lost productivity annually.

But making the money case for obesity prevention isn’t straightforward. For interventions targeting children and youth, only a small fraction of savings is captured in the first decade, since most serious health complications don’t emerge for many years. Long-term obesity prevention, in other words, doesn’t fit into political timetables for elected officials.

Yet lawmakers are keen to know how “best for the money” obesity-prevention programs can help them in the short run. Over the past two years, Harvard Chan’s Steve Gortmaker and his colleagues have been working with state health departments in Alaska, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Washington, and West Virginia and with the city of Philadelphia and other locales, building cost-effectiveness models using local data for a wide variety of interventions—from improved early child care to healthy school environments to communitywide campaigns. “We collaborate with health departments and community stakeholders, provide them with the evidence base, help assess how much different options cost, model the results over a decade, and they pick what they want to work on. One constant that we’ve seen—and these are very different political environments—is a strong interest in cost-effectiveness,” he says.

In a 2015 study in Health Affairs , Gortmaker and colleagues outlined three interventions that would more than pay for themselves: an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages implemented at the state level; elimination of the tax subsidy for advertising unhealthy food to children; and strong nutrition standards for food and drinks sold in schools outside of school meals. Implemented nationally, these interventions would prevent 576,000, 129,100, and 345,000 cases of childhood obesity, respectively, by 2025. The projected net savings to society in obesity-related health care costs for each dollar invested: $31, $33, and $4.60, respectively.

Gortmaker is one of the leaders of a collaborative modeling effort known as CHOICES—for Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study—an acronym that seems a pointed rebuttal to the reflexive conservative argument that government regulation tramples individual choice. Having grown up not far from Des Plaines, Illinois, site of the first McDonald’s franchise in the country, he emphasizes to policymakers that at this late date, America cannot treat its way out of obesity, given current medical know-how. Only a thoroughgoing investment in prevention will turn the tide. “Clinical interventions produce too small an effect, with too small a population, and at high cost,” Gortmaker says. “The good news is that there are many cost-effective options to choose from.”

While Gortmaker underscores the importance of improving both food choices and options for physical activity, he has shown that upgrading the food environment offers much more benefit for the buck. This is in line with the gathering scientific consensus that what we eat plays a greater role in obesity than does sedentary lifestyle (although exercise protects against many of the metabolic consequences of excess weight). “The easiest way to explain it,” Gortmaker says, “is to talk about a sugary beverage—140 calories. You could quickly change a kid’s risk of excess energy balance by 140 calories a day just by switching from a sugary drink a day to water or sparkling water. But for a 10-year-old boy to burn an extra 140 calories, he’d have to replace an hour-and-a-half of sitting with an hour-and-a-half of walking.”

Small tweaks in adults’ diets can likewise make a big difference in short order. “With adults, health care costs rise rapidly with excess weight gain,” Gortmaker says. “If you can slow the onset of obesity, you slow the onset of diabetes, and potentially not only save health care costs but also boost people’s productivity in the workforce.”

One of Gortmaker’s most intriguing calculations spins off of the food industry’s estimated $633 million spent on television marketing aimed at kids. Currently, federal tax treatment of advertising as an ordinary business expense means that the government, in effect, subsidizes hawking of junk food to children. Gortmaker modeled a national intervention that would eliminate this subsidy of TV ads for nutritionally empty foods and beverages aimed at 2- to 19-year-olds. Drawing on well-delineated relationships between exposure to these advertisements and subsequent weight gain, he found that the intervention would save $260 million in downstream health care costs. Although the effect would probably be small at the individual level, it would be significant at the population level.

Level the playing field through taxes and regulation.

When public health took on cigarette smoking, starting in the 1960s, it did so with robust policies banning television ads and other marketing, raising taxes to increase prices, making public places smoke-free, and offering people treatment such as the nicotine patch. In 1965, the smoking rate for U.S. adults was 42.2 percent; today, it is 16.8 percent.

Similarly, America reduced the rate of deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents—a 90 percent decrease over the 20th century, according to the CDC—with mandatory seat belt laws, safer car designs, stop signs, speed limits, rumble strips, and the stigmatization of drunk driving.

Change the product. Change the environment. Change the culture. That is also the policy recipe for stopping obesity.

Laws that make healthy behaviors easier are often followed by positive changes in those behaviors. And people who are trying to adopt healthy behaviors tend to support policies that make their personal aspirations achievable, which in turn nudges lawmakers to back the proposals.

One debate today revolves around whether recipients of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (formerly known as food stamps) should be restricted from buying sodas or junk food. The largest component of the USDA budget, SNAP feeds one in seven Americans. A USDA report, issued last November, found that the number-one purchase by SNAP households was sweetened beverages, a category that included soft drinks, fruit juices, energy drinks, and sweetened teas, accounting for nearly 10 percent of SNAP money spent on food. Is the USDA therefore underwriting the soda industry and planting the seeds for chronic disease that the government will pay to treat years down the line?

Eric Rimm, a professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard Chan School, frames the issue differently. In a 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine , he and his colleagues asked SNAP participants whether they would prefer the standard benefits package or a “SNAP-plus” that prohibited the purchase of sugary beverages but offered 50 percent more money for buying fruits and vegetables. Sixty-eight percent of the participants chose the healthy SNAP-plus option.

“A lot of work around SNAP policy is done by academics and politicians, without reaching out to the beneficiaries,” says Rimm. “We haven’t asked participants, ‘What’s your say in this? How can we make this program better for you?’” To be sure, SNAP is riddled with nutritional contradictions. Under current rules, for example, participants can use benefits to buy a 12-pack of Pepsi or a Snickers bar or a giant bag of Lay’s potato chips but not real food that happens to be heated, such as a package of rotisserie chicken. “This is the most vulnerable population in the country,” says Rimm. “We’re not listening well enough to our constituency.”

Other innovative fiscal levers to alter behavior could also drive down obesity. In 2014, a trio of strong voices on food industry practices—Dariush Mozaffarian, DrPH ’06, dean of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and former associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School; Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard; and David Ludwig, professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan and a physician at Boston Children’s Hospital—broached the idea of a “meaningful” tax on nearly all packaged retail foods and many chain restaurants, with the proceeds used to pay for minimally processed foods and healthier meals for school kids. In essence, the tax externalizes the social costs of harmful individual behavior.

“We made a straightforward proposal to tax all processed foods and then use the income to subsidize whole foods in a short-term, revenue-neutral way,” explains Ludwig. “The power of this idea is that, since there is so much processed food consumption, even a modest tax—in the 10 to 15 percent range—is not going to greatly inflate the cost of these foods. Their price would increase moderately, but the proceeds would not disappear into government coffers. Instead, the revenue would make healthy foods affordable for virtually the entire population, and the benefits would be immediately evident. Yes, people will pay moderately more for their Coke or for their cinnamon bear claw but a lot less for nourishing, whole foods.”

Another suggestion comes from Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, and Abdulrahman M. El-Sayed, a public health physician and epidemiologist. In a 2015 issue of the American Journal of Public Health , they called for “calorie offsets,” similar to the carbon offsets used to mitigate environmental harm caused by the gas and oil industries. A “calorie offset” scheme could hand the food and beverage industries a chance at redemption by inviting them to invest in such undertakings as city farms, cooking classes for parents, healthy school cafeterias, and urban green spaces.

These ambitious proposals face almost impossibly high hurdles. Political battle lines typically pit public health against corporations, with Big Food casting doubt on solid nutrition science, deeming government regulation a threat to free choice, and making self-policing pledges that it has never kept. On the website for the Americans for Food and Beverage Choice, a group spearheaded by the American Beverage Association, is the admonition: “[W]hether it’s at a restaurant or in a grocery store, it’s never the government’s job to decide what you choose to eat and drink.”

Yet surprisingly, many public health professionals are convinced that the only way to stop obesity is to make common cause with the food industry. “This isn’t like tobacco, where it’s a fight to the death. We need the food industry to make healthier food and to make a profit,” says Mozaffarian. “The food industry is much more diverse and heterogeneous than tobacco or even cars. As long as we can help them—through carrots and sticks, tax incentives and disincentives—to move towards healthier products, then they are part of the solution. But we have to be vigilant, because they use a lot of the same tactics that tobacco did.”

Sow what we want to reap.

Americans overeat what our farmers overproduce.

“The U.S. food system is egregiously terrible for human and planetary health,” says Walter Willett. It’s so terrible, Willett made a pie chart of American grain production consumed domestically. It shows that most of the country’s agricultural land goes to the two giant commodity crops: corn and soy. Most of those crops, in turn, go to animal fodder and ethanol, and are also heavily used in processed snack foods. Today, only about 10 percent of grain grown in the U.S. for domestic use is eaten directly by human beings. According to a 2013 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, only 2 percent of U.S. farmland is used to grow fruits and vegetables, while 59 percent is devoted to commodity crops.

Historically, those skewed proportions made sense. Federal food policies, drafted with the goal of alleviating hunger, preferentially subsidize corn and soy production. And whereas corn or soybeans could be shipped for days on a train, fruits and vegetables had to be grown closer to cities by truck farmers so the produce wouldn’t spoil. But those long-ago constraints don’t explain today’s upside-down agricultural priorities.

In a now-classic 2016 Politico article titled “The farm bill drove me insane,” Marion Nestle illustrated the irrational gap between what the government recommends we eat and what it subsidizes: “If you were to create a MyPlate meal that matched where the government historically aimed its subsidies, you’d get a lecture from your doctor. More than three-quarters of your plate would be taken up by a massive corn fritter (80 percent of benefits go to corn, grains and soy oil). You’d have a Dixie cup of milk (dairy gets 3 percent), a hamburger the size of a half dollar (livestock: 2 percent), two peas (fruits and vegetables: 0.45 percent) and an after-dinner cigarette (tobacco: 2 percent). Oh, and a really big linen napkin (cotton: 13 percent) to dab your lips.”

In this sense, the USDA marginalizes human health. Many of the foods that nutritionists agree are best for us—notably, fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts—fall under the bureaucratic rubric “specialty crops,” a category that also includes “dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery crops (including floriculture).” Farm bills, which get passed every five years or so, fortify the status quo. The 2014 Farm Bill, for example, provided $73 million for the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program in 2017, out of a total of about $25 billion for the USDA’s discretionary budget. (The next Farm Bill, now under debate, will be coming out in 2018.)

By contrast, a truly anti-obesigenic agricultural system would stimulate USDA support for crop diversity—through technical assistance, research, agricultural training programs, and financial aid for farmers who are newly planting or transitioning their land into produce. It would also enable farmers, most of whom survive on razor-thin profit margins, to make a decent living.

In the early 1970s, Finland’s death rate from coronary heart disease was the highest in the world, and in the eastern region of North Karelia—a pristine, sparsely populated frontier landscape of forest and lakes—the rate was 40 percent worse than the national average. Every family saw physically active men, loggers and farmers who were strong and lean, dying in their prime.

Thus was born the North Karelia Project, which became a model worldwide for saving lives by transforming lifestyles. The project was launched in 1972 and officially ended 25 years later. While its initial goal was to reduce smoking and saturated fat in the diet, it later resolved to increase fruit and vegetable consumption.

The North Karelia Project fulfilled all of these ambitions. When it started, for example, 86 percent of men and 82 percent of women smeared butter on their bread; by the early 2000s, only 10 percent of men and 4 percent of women so indulged. Use of vegetable oil for cooking jumped from virtually zero in 1970 to 50 percent in 2009. Fruit and vegetables, once rare visitors to the dinner plate, became regulars. Over the project’s official quarter-century existence, coronary heart disease deaths in working-age North Karelian men fell 82 percent, and life expectancy rose seven years.

The secret of North Karelia’s success was an all-out philosophy. Team members spent innumerable hours meeting with residents and assuring them that they had the power to improve their own health. The volunteers enlisted the assistance of an influential women’s group, farmers’ unions, homemakers’ organizations, hunting clubs, and church congregations. They redesigned food labels and upgraded health services. Towns competed in cholesterol-cutting contests. The national government passed sweeping legislation (including a total ban on tobacco advertising). Dairy subsidies were thrown out. Farmers were given strong incentives to produce low-fat milk, or to get paid for meat and dairy products based not on high-fat but on high-protein content. And the newly established East Finland Berry and Vegetable Project helped locals switch from dairy farming—which had made up more than two-thirds of agriculture in the region—to cultivation of cold-hardy currants, gooseberries, and strawberries, as well as rapeseed for heart-healthy canola oil.

“A mass epidemic calls for mass action,” says the project’s director, Pekka Puska, “and the changing of lifestyles can only succeed through community action. In this case, the people pulled the government—the government didn’t pull the people.”

Could the United States in 2017 learn from North Karelia’s 1970s grand experiment?

“Americans didn’t become an obese nation overnight. It took a long time—several decades, the same timeline as in individuals,” notes Frank Hu. “What were we doing over the past 20 years or 30 years, before we crossed this threshold? We haven’t asked these questions. We haven’t done this kind of soul-searching, as individuals or society as a whole.”

Today, Americans may finally be willing to take a hard look at how food figures in their lives. In a July 2015 Gallup phone poll of Americans 18 and older, 61 percent said they actively try to avoid regular soda (the figure was 41 percent in 2002); 50 percent try to avoid sugar; and 93 percent try to eat vegetables (but only 57.7 percent in 2013 reported they ate five or more servings of fruits and vegetables at least four days of the previous week).

Individual resolve, of course, counts for little in problems as big as the obesity epidemic. Most successes in public health bank on collective action to support personal responsibility while fighting discrimination against an epidemic’s victims. [To learn more about the perils of stigma against people with obesity, read “ The Scarlet F .”]

Yet many of public health’s legendary successes also took what seems like an agonizingly long time to work. Do we have that luxury?

“Right now, healthy eating in America is like swimming upstream. If you are a strong swimmer and in good shape, you can swim for a little while, but eventually you’re going to get tired and start floating back down,” says Margo Wootan, SD ’93, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “If you’re distracted for a second—your kid tugs on your pant leg, you had a bad day, you’re tired, you’re worried about paying your bills—the default options push you toward eating too much of the wrong kinds of food.”

But Wootan has not lowered her sights. “What we need is mobilization,” she says. “Mobilize the public to address nutrition and obesity as societal problems—recognizing that each of us makes individual choices throughout the day, but that right now the environment is stacked against us. If we don’t change that, stopping obesity will be impossible.”

The passing of power to younger generations may aid the cause. Millennials are more inclined to view food not merely as nutrition but also as narrative—a trend that leaves Duke University’s Kelly Brownell optimistic. “Younger people have been raised to care about the story of their food. Their interest is in where it came from, who grew it, whether it contributes to sustainable agriculture, its carbon footprint, and other factors. The previous generation paid attention to narrower issues, such as hunger or obesity. The Millennials are attuned to the concept of food systems.”

We are at a public health inflection point. Forty years from now, when we gaze at the high-resolution digital color photos from our own era, what will we think? Will we realize that we failed to address the obesity epidemic, or will we know that we acted wisely?

The question brings us back to the 1970s, and to Pekka Puska, the physician who directed the North Karelia Project during its quarter-century existence. Puska, now 71, was all of 27 and burning with big ideas when he signed up to lead the audacious effort. He knows the promise and the perils of idealism. “Changing the world may have been utopic,” he says, “but changing public health was possible.”

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Obesity Essay

Last updated on: Feb 9, 2023

Obesity Essay: A Complete Guide and Topics

By: Nova A.

11 min read

Reviewed By: Jacklyn H.

Published on: Aug 31, 2021

Are you assigned to write an essay about obesity? The first step is to define obesity.

The obesity epidemic is a major issue facing our country right now. It's complicated- it could be genetic or due to your environment, but either way, there are ways that you can fix it!

Learn all about what causes weight gain and get tips on how you can get healthy again.

On this Page

What is Obesity

What is obesity? Obesity and BMI (body mass index) are both tools of measurement that are used by doctors to assess body fat according to the height, age, and gender of a person. If the BMI is between 25 to 29.9, that means the person has excess weight and body fat.

If the BMI exceeds 30, that means the person is obese. Obesity is a condition that increases the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, and other medical conditions like metabolic syndrome, arthritis, and even some types of cancer.

Obesity Definition

Obesity is defined by the World Health Organization as an accumulation of abnormal and excess body fat that comes with several risk factors. It is measured by the body mass index BMI, body weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of a person’s height (in meters).

Obesity in America

Obesity is on the verge of becoming an epidemic as 1 in every 3 Americans can be categorized as overweight and obese. Currently, America is an obese country, and it continues to get worse.

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Causes of obesity

Do you see any obese or overweight people around you?

You likely do.

This is because fast-food chains are becoming more and more common, people are less active, and fruits and vegetables are more expensive than processed foods, thus making them less available to the majority of society. These are the primary causes of obesity.

Obesity is a disease that affects all age groups, including children and elderly people.

Now that you are familiar with the topic of obesity, writing an essay won’t be that difficult for you.

How to Write an Obesity Essay

The format of an obesity essay is similar to writing any other essay. If you need help regarding how to write an obesity essay, it is the same as writing any other essay.

Obesity Essay Introduction

The trick is to start your essay with an interesting and catchy sentence. This will help attract the reader's attention and motivate them to read further. You don’t want to lose the reader’s interest in the beginning and leave a bad impression, especially if the reader is your teacher.

A hook sentence is usually used to open the introductory paragraph of an essay in order to make it interesting. When writing an essay on obesity, the hook sentence can be in the form of an interesting fact or statistic.

Head on to this detailed article on hook examples to get a better idea.

Once you have hooked the reader, the next step is to provide them with relevant background information about the topic. Don’t give away too much at this stage or bombard them with excess information that the reader ends up getting bored with. Only share information that is necessary for the reader to understand your topic.

Next, write a strong thesis statement at the end of your essay, be sure that your thesis identifies the purpose of your essay in a clear and concise manner. Also, keep in mind that the thesis statement should be easy to justify as the body of your essay will revolve around it.

Body Paragraphs

The details related to your topic are to be included in the body paragraphs of your essay. You can use statistics, facts, and figures related to obesity to reinforce your thesis throughout your essay.

If you are writing a cause-and-effect obesity essay, you can mention different causes of obesity and how it can affect a person’s overall health. The number of body paragraphs can increase depending on the parameters of the assignment as set forth by your instructor.

Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that is the crux of its content. It is necessary to write an engaging topic sentence as it helps grab the reader’s interest. Check out this detailed blog on writing a topic sentence to further understand it.

End your essay with a conclusion by restating your research and tying it to your thesis statement. You can also propose possible solutions to control obesity in your conclusion. Make sure that your conclusion is short yet powerful.

Obesity Essay Examples

Essay about Obesity (PDF)

Childhood Obesity Essay (PDF)

Obesity in America Essay (PDF)

Essay about Obesity Cause and Effects (PDF)

Satire Essay on Obesity (PDF)

Obesity Argumentative Essay (PDF)

Obesity Essay Topics

Choosing a topic might seem an overwhelming task as you may have many ideas for your assignment. Brainstorm different ideas and narrow them down to one, quality topic.

If you need some examples to help you with your essay topic related to obesity, dive into this article and choose from the list of obesity essay topics.

Childhood Obesity

As mentioned earlier, obesity can affect any age group, including children. Obesity can cause several future health problems as children age.

Here are a few topics you can choose from and discuss for your childhood obesity essay:

What are the causes of increasing obesity in children?
Obese parents may be at risk for having children with obesity.
What is the ratio of obesity between adults and children?
What are the possible treatments for obese children?
Are there any social programs that can help children with combating obesity?
Has technology boosted the rate of obesity in children?
Are children spending more time on gadgets instead of playing outside?
Schools should encourage regular exercises and sports for children.
How can sports and other physical activities protect children from becoming obese?
Can childhood abuse be a cause of obesity among children?
What is the relationship between neglect in childhood and obesity in adulthood?
Does obesity have any effect on the psychological condition and well-being of a child?
Are electronic medical records effective in diagnosing obesity among children?
Obesity can affect the academic performance of your child.
Do you believe that children who are raised by a single parent can be vulnerable to obesity?
You can promote interesting exercises to encourage children.
What is the main cause of obesity, and why is it increasing with every passing day?
Schools and colleges should work harder to develop methodologies to decrease childhood obesity.
The government should not allow schools and colleges to include sweet or fatty snacks as a part of their lunch.
If a mother is obese, can it affect the health of the child?
Children who gain weight frequently can develop chronic diseases.

Obesity Argumentative Essay Topics

Do you want to write an argumentative essay on the topic of obesity?

The following list can help you with that!

Here are some examples you can choose from for your argumentative essay about obesity:

Can vegetables and fruits decrease the chances of obesity?
Should you go for surgery to overcome obesity?
Are there any harmful side effects?
Can obesity be related to the mental condition of an individual?
Are parents responsible for controlling obesity in childhood?
What are the most effective measures to prevent the increase in the obesity rate?
Why is the obesity rate increasing in the United States?
Can the lifestyle of a person be a cause of obesity?
Does the economic situation of a country affect the obesity rate?
How is obesity considered an international health issue?
Can technology and gadgets affect obesity rates?
What can be the possible reasons for obesity in a school?
How can we address the issue of obesity?
Is obesity a chronic disease?
Is obesity a major cause of heart attacks?
Are the junk food chains causing an increase in obesity?
Do nutritional programs help in reducing the obesity rate?
How can the right type of diet help with obesity?
Why should we encourage sports activities in schools and colleges?
Can obesity affect a person’s behavior?

Health Related Topics for Research Paper

If you are writing a research paper, you can explain the cause and effect of obesity.

Here are a few topics that link to the cause and effects of obesity.Review the literature of previous articles related to obesity. Describe the ideas presented in the previous papers.

Can family history cause obesity in future generations?
Can we predict obesity through genetic testing?
What is the cause of the increasing obesity rate?
Do you think the increase in fast-food restaurants is a cause of the rising obesity rate?
Is the ratio of obese women greater than obese men?
Why are women more prone to be obese as compared to men?
Stress can be a cause of obesity. Mention the reasons how mental health can be related to physical health.
Is urban life a cause of the increasing obesity rate?
People from cities are prone to be obese as compared to people from the countryside.
How obesity affects the life expectancy of people? What are possible solutions to decrease the obesity rate?
Do family eating habits affect or trigger obesity?
How do eating habits affect the health of an individual?
How can obesity affect the future of a child?
Obese children are more prone to get bullied in high school and college.
Why should schools encourage more sports and exercise for children?

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Topics for Essay on Obesity as a Problem

Do you think a rise in obesity rate can affect the economy of a country?

Here are some topics for your assistance regarding your economics related obesity essay.

Does socioeconomic status affect the possibility of obesity in an individual?
Analyze the film and write a review on “Fed Up” – an obesity epidemic.
Share your reviews on the movie “The Weight of The Nation.”
Should we increase the prices of fast food and decrease the prices of fruits and vegetables to decrease obesity?
Do you think healthy food prices can be a cause of obesity?
Describe what measures other countries have taken in order to control obesity?
The government should play an important role in controlling obesity. What precautions should they take?
Do you think obesity can be one of the reasons children get bullied?
Do obese people experience any sort of discrimination or inappropriate behavior due to their weight?
Are there any legal protections for people who suffer from discrimination due to their weight?
Which communities have a higher percentage of obesity in the United States?
Discuss the side effects of the fast-food industry and their advertisements on children.
Describe how the increasing obesity rate has affected the economic condition of the United States.
What is the current percentage of obesity all over the world? Is the obesity rate increasing with every passing day?
Why is the obesity rate higher in the United States as compared to other countries?
Do Asians have a greater percentage of obese people as compared to Europe?
Does the cultural difference affect the eating habits of an individual?
Obesity and body shaming.
Why is a skinny body considered to be ideal? Is it an effective way to reduce the obesity rate?

Obesity Solution Essay Topics

With all the developments in medicine and technology, we still don’t have exact measures to treat obesity.

Here are some insights you can discuss in your essay:

How do obese people suffer from metabolic complications?
Describe the fat distribution in obese people.
Is type 2 diabetes related to obesity?
Are obese people more prone to suffer from diabetes in the future?
How are cardiac diseases related to obesity?
Can obesity affect a woman’s childbearing time phase?
Describe the digestive diseases related to obesity.
Obesity may be genetic.
Obesity can cause a higher risk of suffering a heart attack.
What are the causes of obesity? What health problems can be caused if an individual suffers from obesity?
What are the side effects of surgery to overcome obesity?
Which drugs are effective when it comes to the treatment of obesity?
Is there a difference between being obese and overweight?
Can obesity affect the sociological perspective of an individual?
Explain how an obesity treatment works.
How can the government help people to lose weight and improve public health?

Writing an essay is a challenging yet rewarding task. All you need is to be organized and clear when it comes to academic writing.

Choose a topic you would like to write on.
Organize your thoughts.
Pen down your ideas.
Compose a perfect essay that will help you ace your subject.
Proofread and revise your paper.

Were the topics useful for you? We hope so!

However, if you are still struggling to write your paper, you can pick any of the topics from this list, and our essay writer will help you craft a perfect essay.

Are you struggling to write an effective essay?

If writing an essay is the actual problem and not just the topic, you can always hire an essay writing service for your help. Essay experts at 5StarEssays can help compose an impressive essay within your deadline.

All you have to do is contact us. We will get started on your paper while you can sit back and relax.

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Marketing, Thesis

As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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How to Approach Writing an Argumentative Essay on Obesity

Obesity being a major problem in America is something that few will disagree with, but coming to an agreement on the solutions can be more difficult. The focus of any argumentative essay is to put forward a convincing case as to why your opinion should be the one that’s followed. In a standard five-paragraph essay format, you will lay this out as an introduction, three cohesive arguments as the body text and a conclusion that ties everything together, and we will look at them each in more detail here.

A checklist before you begin:

Read the terms of your assignment clearly so you know what is expected;
Research the topic by reading relevant papers and other literature;
Write an outline of your position and three supporting arguments;
Make note of relevant quotes and statistics that will support your positions;
Ensure there is continuity throughout your basic outline.

Step 1: Introducing your argument

Though it is widely accepted as being a problem in contemporary America, one should never begin an essay based on a presumption. If your initial premise is proved to be off target or disagreed with by the reader, then you’re already fighting from a losing position before you’ve even started.

Begin with an arresting quote or statistic from a respected source and work your opening stance around that. This will lend greater authority to your own words in the eyes of the reader and encourage them to properly consider your points. For the purposes of this guide, we will take the stance that:

Obesity affects a country on a national level and should therefore be dealt with nationally, not just individually.

Briefly explain the issues at hand and present your standpoint on what needs to be done, making sure that this fits with the main arguments you are going to make. Cohesiveness is always a key factor in a good argument.

Step 2: The body of the work and your specific arguments

In a standard essay format, you will have three paragraphs to go into detail on points you have chosen to support your argument. Try to make each of these arguments distinct from each other yet all in line with your main thesis. An example of this could be if you put forward three points such as these:

Obesity leads to greater strain on healthcare and services;
Workers are less productive, thus contributing less tax, when suffering from obesity;
Similar to cigarettes, advertising for unhealthy lifestyle choices should be restricted or be obliged to provide strict warnings.

By taking a paragraph for each point and explaining it concisely, as well as including factual data from your research into relevant literature, you will be able to put across a strong argument in favour of your initial proposition. Each point should be able to exist on its own but also contain elements of your overall position. In the examples given, the first two points tie in with the “national” problem narrative, while the third suggests a path for a “national” solution.

Step 3: Bringing your argument to a climax

After the hard work of stating your belief and backing it up with incisive and well-supported points, the conclusion should leave a lasting impression. If your argument has been successful, the reader will have been won over to your side, and so this is your opportunity to really drive your argument home. Steer clear of excessive hyperbole but don’t be afraid of stating the real consequences of not listening to your argument. In general, one should restate a version of their introduction, briefly mention their points and then close on a line that will stick in the memory:

If we do not heed the warnings about the effects obesity will have on our nation, this country, as we know it, may be facing one of its biggest problems since its inception.

With a good plan in place and following the guide we have laid out, you will be able to write an excellent argumentative essay that will convince any reader and guarantee great grades.

Is Obesity a Disease?

The United States is the second most obese industrialized country in the world. 39.6% of American adults in 2016 were obese, compared to 14% in the mid-1970s. Obesity accounts for 19.8% of deaths and 21% of healthcare spending in the United States.

Proponents contend that obesity is a disease because it meets the definition of disease; it decreases life expectancy and impairs the normal functioning of the body; and it can be caused by genetic factors.

Opponents contend that obesity is not a disease because it is a preventable risk factor for other diseases; is the result of eating too much; and is caused by exercising too little. Read more background…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 Obesity meets the definition of disease. The American Medical Association’s 2013 “Council on Science and Public Health Report” identified three criteria to define disease: 1. “an impairment of the normal functioning of some aspect of the body;” 2. “characteristic signs and symptoms;” and 3. “harm or morbidity.” [ 19 ] Obesity causes impairment, has characteristic signs and symptoms, and increases harm and morbidity. Scott Kahan, MD, MPH, Director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness and Preventative Medicine Physician at Johns Hopkins University, stated obesity “satisfies all the definitions and criteria of what a disease and medical condition is… The one difference is that people who have obesity have to wear their disease on the outside.” [ 26 ] Read More

Pro 2 Obesity, like other diseases, impairs the normal functioning of the body. People who are obese have excess adipose (or fat) tissue that causes the overproduction of leptin (a molecule that regulates food intake and energy expenditure) and other food intake and energy mediators in the body, which leads to abnormal regulation of food intake and energy expenditure. [ 35 ] Obesity can impair normal mobility and range of motion in knees and hips, and obese patients make up 33% of all joint replacement operations. [ 48 ] Obesity is also linked to reproductive impairment, contributing to sexual dysfunction in both sexes, infertility and risk of miscarriage in women, and lower sperm counts in men. [ 48 ] Read More

Pro 3 Obesity decreases a person’s life expectancy and can cause death, like other diseases. Obesity in adults can lead to three years’ loss of life. Extreme obesity can shorten a person’s life span by 10 years. [ 4 ] A July 13, 2016 Lancet meta-study found that even moderate obesity led to an increased chance of early death: 29.5% for men (compared to 19% for men of normal BMI weight) and 14.6% for women (compared to 11%). The authors calculated that one in five premature deaths in North America could be avoided if obese people were normal BMI weights. [ 58 ] [ 59 ] The Surgeon General reports an estimated 300,000 deaths per year may be attributed to obesity. [ 36 ] People who are obese have a 50-100% increased risk of death from all causes. [ 36 ] Read More

Pro 4 Obesity can be a genetic disorder such as sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs, which are classified as diseases. Researchers have identified 79 genetic syndromes associated with obesity. [ 60 ] [ 61 ] Studies have shown that obesity can be inherited like height. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Genetic disposition plays a large role in determining if a person will be obese. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] A May 2014 study published in the Journal of Molecular Psychology linked higher rates of obesity to the “fat mass and obesity association” (FTO) gene. [ 56 ] The FTO gene reportedly lowers activity in the part of the brain that “controls impulses and the response to the taste and texture of food,” so people with the gene are more likely to eat more fatty foods and eat more impulsively as they age. [ 56 ] A 1990 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on body mass in twins not raised in the same home concluded, “genetic influences on body-mass index are substantial, whereas the childhood environment has little or no influence.” [ 38 ] In addition to genetic predisposition, almost 10% of morbidly obese people have defects in the genes that regulate food intake, metabolism, and weight. [ 37 ] Read More

Pro 5 Government entities and major medical groups recognize obesity as a disease. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, and the Obesity Society, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) have identified obesity as a disease. [ 50 ] [ 46 ] [ 47 ] Even the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recognizes obesity as a disease so weight loss expenses may be counted as a medical deduction from taxes. [ 49 ] On June 18, 2013, the American Medical Association recognized obesity as “a disease requiring a range of medical interventions to advance obesity treatment and prevention.” [ 39 ] Read More

Pro 6 Physicians from as early as the 17th century have referenced obesity as a disease. English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) wrote, “Corpulency [obesity] may be ranked amongst the diseases arising from original imperfections in the functions of some of the organs.” [ 9 ] William Wadd, a 19th century British surgeon and medical author, wrote, “when in excess–amounting to what may be termed OBESITY–[fat] is not only in itself a disease, but may be the cause of many fatal effects, particularly in acute disorders.” [ 9 ] In the Feb. 12, 1825 issue of The Medical Advisor and Guide to Health and Long Life , Robert Thomas, a 19th century doctor, wrote “Corpulence, when it arrives at a certain height, becomes an absolute disease.” [ 34 ] Read More

Con 1 Obesity is a preventable risk factor for other diseases and conditions, and is not a disease itself. Like smoking is a preventable risk factor for lung cancer and drinking is a preventable risk factor for alcoholism, obesity is a preventable risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cancers (like endometrial, breast, and colon), high cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides, liver and gallbladder disease, incontinence, increased surgical risk, sleep apnea, respiratory problems (like asthma), osteoarthritis, infertility and other reproductive complications, complications during pregnancy and birth defects, and mental health conditions. [ 42 ] [ 36 ] Women who gain 20 pounds or more between age 20 and midlife double their risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. [ 36 ] For every 2 pound weight increase, the risk of developing arthritis rises 9-13%. [ 36 ] Preliminary research and anecdotal evidence from doctors suggest that obesity is the second most significant risk factor for COVID-19 (coronavirus) after older age. Young adults who are obese and contract COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized, even if otherwise healthy. Doctors theorize that compromised respiratory function, compression of the diaphragm, lungs, and chest capacity, and low-grade inflammation already present in people with obesity increase their risk of contracting COVID-19. [ 67 ] Read More

Con 2 Obesity is a side effect, not a disease. Obesity can be caused by hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, polycystic ovary syndrome, arthritis, increased insulin levels (from carbohydrate-heavy diets or diabetes treatments) and depression. [ 17 ] [ 55 ] Certain drugs like antidepressants, anti-seizure medications, diabetes medications, anti-psychotic medications, antihistamines, anticonvulsants, steroids, beta blockers, and contraceptives can cause obesity. [ 17 ] [ 16 ] Obesity can also be caused by lack of sleep (or sleep debt), ingesting endocrine disrupters (such as BPA, DDT, and phthalates), consuming high-fructose corn syrup, a lack of temperature variation (due to air conditioners and heaters), and quitting smoking. [ 16 ] [ 15 ] Read More

Con 3 Many obese people live long, healthy lives. A 2013 Lancet article noted that as many as one third of obese people are “healthy obese,” meaning that despite being significantly overweight they have normal cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and no sign of diabetes. [ 41 ] Obese people tend to go to the doctor more and have regular checks for other risk factors and diseases. [ 40 ] Many people with a BMI (Body Mass Index; a measure of body fat based on height and weight) in the obesity range are not physically impaired and live normal lives. BMI does not take into account the overall health of the individual and can identify fit, muscular people as obese because muscle weighs more than fat. [ 40 ] [ 41 ] Read More

Con 4 Obesity is the result of eating too much. The suggested daily caloric intake for 31-50-year-olds is 1,800 calories for women and 2,200 calories for men. [ 7 ] In 2009-2010, 30-39-year-old women consumed an average 1,831 calories (which is 1.7% over the recommendation) while men of the same age consumed an average 2,736 calories per day (which is 22% over the recommendation). [ 3 ] The average American restaurant meal portion size is four times as large as portions in the 1950s and 96% of entrees at chain restaurants exceed dietary guidelines for fat, sodium, and saturated fat, with some almost exceeding daily intakes in one meal. [ 44 ] [ 45 ] The body is doing what it has evolved to do by converting excess calories into fat cells. The CDC recommends reducing consumption of sugar drinks (like sodas) and high-energy-dense foods to prevent and reduce obesity. [ 42 ] The Mayo Clinic states, “Having a diet that’s high in calories, eating fast food, skipping breakfast, eating most of your calories at night, drinking high-calorie beverages and eating oversized portions all contribute to weight gain.” [ 43 ] Read More

Con 5 Obesity is the result of sedentary lifestyles. Compared to 40 years ago, people today spend more time commuting, sitting in front of a computer, watching television, playing video games, and generally exercising less. [ 10 ] In 1960 50% of jobs required moderate physical activity compared to just 20% of jobs in 2011; the other 80% in 2011 required little or no physical activity. [ 18 ] This shift represents 120-140 fewer calories burned per day, which closely aligns with the nation’s overall weight gain trends. [ 18 ] Men expended 142 fewer calories daily and weighed 32.8 pounds more in 2003-2006 than in 1960-1962, while women expended 124 fewer calories daily and weighed 25.13 pounds more in 2003-2006 than in 1960-1962. [ 18 ] Read More

Did You Know?
1. In 2013 the United States was the most obese OECD nation with 36.2% of Americans falling into the obese category.[ ]
2. In Nov. 2013, the US Surgeon General reported an estimated 300,000 deaths per year may be attributed to obesity. [ ] Obesity was the third leading cause of death in 2009, after high blood pressure and smoking.[ ]
3. Nationally, in 2017, 15.8% of American youth aged 10-17 were categorized as obese, including 22.5% of black youth, 20.6% of Hispanic youth, 12.5% of white youth, and 6.4% of Asian youth.[ ]
4. The US healthcare costs of obesity and obesity-related preventable diseases are estimated to be between $147 billion and $210 billion per year.[ ]
5. In 1994 all US states had obesity rates at 19% or lower. By 2010, no state reported an obesity rate under 19%. By 2017, 29 states had levels over 30%. [ ] [ ]

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Obesity in America: Cause and Effect Essay Sample

It is clear that the American lifestyle has contributed to the increasing prevalence of obesity. With estimates from the Washington-based Centers for Disease Prevention in the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that one in three American adults is overweight, it is evident that the country is facing an obesity epidemic. To better understand the causes and effects of obesity, research is needed to further explore the issue. For those struggling with obesity, coursework assistance may be available to help them make the necessary lifestyle changes in order to live a healthier life.

Writing a thesis paper on the topic of obesity can be extremely challenging. It requires extensive research and time to adequately cover the subject. However, there are services available that can provide assistance with the writing process. Pay for a thesis allows for the benefit of having an experienced professional provide guidance and support throughout the entire process.

Causes of Obesity

Every phenomenon must have a reason. In order to write a cause and effect essay , you need to analyze the topic carefully to cover all aspects. Obesity is considered to be a complex illness, with a number of factors contributing to its development. These can be:

hereditary;

As you may have guessed, it is the latter category of causes and effects that we are interested in. At this point, we care about the five ones that have made the biggest contribution.

Product Range

The main cause of obesity is junk food and an unbalanced diet rich in simple carbohydrates, fats, and sugars, plus a bunch of additives. Manufactured, processed, refined, and packaged meals are the most popular. Thanks to advances in technology, Americans have come to mass-produce meals that keep fresh longer and taste better. It takes less time to prepare unhealthy, processed foods in the microwave than it does to cook them yourself.

Lack of a work-life balance, high-stress levels, insufficient sleeping hours contribute to body weight gain. Not only do these factors contribute to this, but failing to take the time to do your homework can also have a negative impact on your physical health. Without a healthy, balanced approach to work, rest, and play, you may find yourself increasingly dependent on a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to overweight consequences. Many Americans work 50, 60, or more hours a week and suffer from a deficit of leisure hours. Cooking processed foods saves them hours and money, even though they end up costing them a lot more – by causing cardiovascular disease. In addition, obese people feel stressed on a regular basis in the United States metropolitan areas. Many of them are simply binge eating under the influence of negative emotions. Chronic overeating leads to a disturbance in the appetite center in the brain, and the normal amount of food eaten can no longer suppress hunger as much as necessary, affecting the body mass.

Food Deserts

The term ‘ food desert ‘ refers to poor areas (urban, suburban and rural) with limited access to fresh fruit, grains, and vegetables – places where it is much easier to access junk food. A grocery shop in a food desert that sells healthy foods may be 10-15 miles away, while a mini-market or cheap shop that sells harmful snacks is close to the house. In such a world, it takes much more effort to eat healthier, form eating habits, and stay slim.

Everyone’s Passion for Sweets

Consuming sweets in large quantities is addictive: the more and easier we give the body energy, the more the brain uses serotonin and dopamine to encourage it – it will make obese people want sweets again and again during the day. Cakes and pastries are fast carbohydrates that easily satisfy hunger and increase body mass. Despite the harm of sweets, obese people experience the need for them to satiate. Sweetened carbonated drinks are one of the main sources of sugar in the American diet. Moreover, some individuals may be more adversely affected by such diets than others: patients with a genetic predisposition to obesity gain body mass faster from sugary drinks than those without it. This leads to childhood obesity.

The Harm of Tolerance

Every year, the body positive movement is becoming more and more popular all over the world. It would seem that this major trend should have freed us from the problems associated with the cult of thinness and society’s notorious standards. In many ways, a positive attitude towards the body has proved fruitful. For example, the notion of beauty has clearly broadened. Now on fashion shows and magazine covers, you can see not only a girl with perfectly retouched skin and without a single hint of body fat but also an ordinary person with its inherent features: overweight, wrinkles, hair, and individual skin features. In general, all the things that we are all so familiar with in real life.

Does it really make that much sense? Is this a positive thing in terms of the cause and effect topic regarding obesity? In short, opinions are divided. Extremes aren’t easy to overcome. Not everyone manages to do it. Researchers have concluded that due to plus size having become positioned as a variant of the norm, more persons have become obese. Many obese Americans have formed the opinion that it is really quite normal, and they have become oblivious to the damage it does to their health. This is what we are going to focus on next.

Effects of Obesity

We all know that obesity is dangerous to health. However, medical studies show that most adults are unaware of the number of complications and diseases that obesity in America entails. So they are fairly comfortable with becoming gradually fatter. But indifference is replaced by concern when obesity related diseases begin to occur.

For interesting examples of students writing that also reveal the causes and effects of other phenomena, consult the custom essay service offering essays by professionals. In this way, you will realize the importance of highlighting the effects right after the causes.

Is obesity an aesthetic disadvantage, an inconvenience, a limitation in physical activity or is it an illness after all? How does it affect health, and what are the consequences? The visible signs of obesity are by no means the only complication associated with this condition. Obesity creates a high risk of life-threatening diseases such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart attack, myocardial infarction, and kidney and liver problems. Moreover, it can also lead to disability.

Cardiovascular Disease

This is the most serious and damaging impact on the body and blood vessels in particular. Every extra kilo is a huge additional load on the heart. Obesity increases the risk of heart attacks. Experts from the American Heart Association have developed a paper on the relationship between obesity and cardiovascular disease, which discusses the impact of obesity on the diagnosis and outcomes of patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, heart failure, and arrhythmias. Childhood obesity aggravates the course of cardiovascular disease from a very early age. The fact that even kids and adolescents are obese is associated with high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and hyperglycemia.

The result is excessive insulin production in the body. This, in turn, leads to an overabundance of insulin in the blood, which makes the peripheral tissues more resistant to it. As a consequence of the above, sodium metabolism is disturbed, and blood pressure rises. It is important to remember that excessive carbohydrate food intake leads to increased production of insulin by the pancreas. Excess insulin in the human body easily converts glucose into fat. And obesity reduces tissue sensitivity to insulin itself. This kind of vicious circle leads to type 2 diabetes.

Effects on Joints

Obesity increases the load on joints to a great extent, especially if one undergoes little or no physical activity. For instance, if one lives in a megalopolis, where all physical activity consists of getting off the sofa, walking to the car, and plumping up in an office chair at work. All this leads to a reduction in muscle mass, which is already weak, and all the load falls on the joints and ligaments.

The result is arthritis, arthrosis, and osteochondrosis. Consequently, a seemingly illogical situation is formed – there is practically no exercise, but joints are worn out harder than in the case of powerlifters. In turn, according to a study by the University of California, reducing body weight reduces the risk of osteoarthritis.

Infertility

In most cases, being obese leads to endocrine infertility, as it causes an irregular menstrual cycle. Women experience thyroid disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome, problems with conception, and decreased progesterone hormone. Obese men are faced with erectile dysfunction, reduced testosterone levels, and infertility. It should be noted that the mother’s obesity affects not only her health but also the one of her unborn child. These children are at higher risk of congenital malformations.

Corresponding Inconveniences

Public consciousness is still far from the notion that obese people are sick individuals. The social significance of the issue is that people who are severely obese find it difficult to get a job. They experience discriminatory restrictions on promotion, daily living disadvantages, restrictions on mobility, clothing choices, discomfort with adequate hygiene, and sexual dysfunction. Some of these individuals not only suffer from illness and limited mobility but also have low self-esteem, depression, and other psychological problems due to involuntary isolation by watching television or playing video games. Therefore, the public has to recognize the need to establish and implement national and childhood obesity epidemic prevention programs.

Society today provokes unintentional adult and childhood obesity among its members by encouraging the consumption of high-fat, high-calorie foods and, at the same time, by technological advances, promoting sedentary lifestyles like spending time watching television or playing video games. These social and technological factors have contributed to the rise in obesity in recent decades. Developing a responsible attitude towards health will only have a full impact if people are given the opportunity to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. At the level of the community as a whole, it is therefore important to support people in adhering to dieting recommendations through the continued implementation of evidence-based and demographic-based policies to make regular physical activity and good nutrition both affordable and feasible for all. It is recommended to cut down on the food consumed.

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Argumentative Essay on Obesity in America

July 23, 2024

Extra weight is a big problem in America. The States are in search of methods to deal with the trouble. One of these methods is the competent education of the young generation. It is obligatory for some students to write an argumentative essay on obesity in America.

By writing this work, youngsters learn the healthy eating rules and find new solutions to the extra weight problem.

The Proper Essay Composition

Argumentative paper differs from common academic writing. Expressing your point of view and proving it with arguments is not enough. The first difference is that this kind of work has a certain position in it. You need to demonstrate positive and negative sides of the topic. Even though the topic is about the disease, you need to demonstrate pros of this situation. After demonstrating them, you can choose your position for this topic or just order essays help .

Essay on obesity in the USA also must include reasons or, in other words, why the student believes in a fact that this is positive/negative. For instance, “I think that overweight is amazing because it helps people to be unusual. So, I wish to be fat in the future” or “I think that it’s bad because people with overweight have too many problems with health.”

Offering these reasons, the student makes his work more convincing, supporting them with evidence. And the last section is the conclusion. Sum up all the arguments and say again that you truly believe that this problem in America would save the country/ruin it one day.

Advice for Works about Obesity

Search for some information about overweight in USA in either books or Internet.
Don’t mention the thing that you truly love/hate fat people in your country from the first sentences. Try to take the neutral position with sentence like: “Many people say that…”
No offensive content! Tell about happy people with this difficulty – great politics, writers or singers.
In the main body tell the reader about some ways of avoiding this problem – healthy eating, sports, etc.
It would be nice to tell about a real person that used to have an extra weight and became successful after that. Who knows, maybe it will motivate some people for changes.

Life Hacks or Write with Pleasure

If you want to write a paper on obesity in America better – imagine that you became fat. What kind of difficulties would you have?
If you don’t have any own thoughts – use statistics data. It will suit any work.
Statements of dietitians and doctors of medicine also will be a useful addition.
Remember – you’re helping to solve a worldwide problem, so it would be interesting to read how people abroad cope with it.
Get a textbook for pros/cons to use them for your argumentative essay on mobile phones.

Teachers in universities are trying to attract students to the solution of many problems: lack of water, hunger in Africa, global warming. Fortunately, obesity is not a looming disaster, it can be fought now.

In search of a decent argument for essay for sale, people study this topic deeper from all aspects. Youngsters are discovering how important this issue is. The ability to prove your point of view, manipulation with real facts – is a key to ideal essay writing on obesity in America.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Public Health Issues — Obesity

Essay Examples on Obesity

Hook examples for obesity essays, "the silent epidemic among us" hook.

"Obesity silently creeps into our lives, affecting millions. Explore the hidden health crisis, its causes, and its far-reaching consequences on individuals and society."

"From Childhood to Adulthood: Battling Obesity" Hook

"Childhood obesity often follows us into adulthood. Share stories of individuals who have embarked on journeys of transformation and discuss the challenges they face."

"Obesity's Toll on Public Health" Hook

"Obesity is a public health crisis with wide-ranging effects. Investigate the strain on healthcare systems, the rise of related diseases, and the economic impact of obesity."

"The Cultural Shift: Food, Technology, and Sedentary Lifestyles" Hook

"Examine how cultural factors, including dietary habits, technology use, and sedentary lifestyles, have contributed to the obesity epidemic. What can we learn from these trends?"

"Breaking the Cycle: Strategies for Prevention" Hook

"Prevention is key to combating obesity. Discuss effective strategies for preventing obesity in children and adults, from education to policy changes."

"The Psychological Battle: Obesity and Mental Health" Hook

"Obesity often intersects with mental health challenges. Explore the complex relationship between obesity and mental well-being, as well as the stigma attached to it."

"Shifting Perspectives: Celebrating Body Positivity" Hook

"In the midst of the obesity crisis, the body positivity movement is gaining ground. Discuss the importance of promoting self-acceptance and diverse body images."

Obesity in America: a Growing Epidemic

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The Issue of Obesity and Way of Its Prevention

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Obesity in America: Causes, Effects, and Ways to Combat

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Obesity as a Stigma Or a Threat to Health

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Obesity is a condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may have a negative effect on health. Medical organizations tend to classify people as obese based on body mass index (BMI) – a ratio of a person's weight in kilograms to the square of their height in meters.

There are three types of obesity: Class 1 (low-risk) obesity, if BMI is 30.0 to 34.9; Class 2 (moderate-risk) obesity, if BMI is 35.0 to 39.9; Class 3 (high-risk) obesity, if BMI is equal to or greater than 40.0.

The major contributors to obesity are: diet, sedentary lifestyle, genetics, other illnesses, social determinants, gut bacteria, and other factors.

Excessive body weight has a strong link to many diseases and conditions, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, osteoarthritis, and asthma. As a result, obesity has been found to reduce life expectancy.

Most of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. 39 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2020. Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. From 1999-2000 through 2017-March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%.

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470 Obesity Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Good Argumentative Essay About What You Eat Is Your Business

Obesity has become one of the major health issues in the United States of America. This argumentative paper discusses ‘What You Eat Is Your Business” by Radley Balko which is basically a study about the initials taken for declining obesity for public health by the federal government and the responsibility of an individual that should be understood and resulted in a good initial by its own effort.

Lifestyle Diseases Argumentative Essay

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Good Example Of Obesity In America Argumentative Essay

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Free Argumentative Essay On Health Problems Of American Population: Causes And Remedial Suggestions

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(First Paragraph) Your Name, Your complete departmental and institutional affiliation (Second Paragraph) Changes in your affiliation, if any (Third Paragraph) Please enlist your acknowledgments, funding sources, special circumstances, etc. (Fourth Paragraph) Your mailing address, e-mail, and other pertinent contact information

The Rise of Obesity in America

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Executive Summary In the past years, obesity was a condition that only affected the old people. It was never a condition which was known to be a cause for worry for the younger generations. However, with the growth in technology and the globalization aspect, a lot of young people are getting into this problem. Based on this understanding, this essay proposal seeks to find a way through which adolescents can be helped to steer away from this menace. The proposal looks at the causes of obesity, which eventually gives a hint into how the problem can be addressed.

Free Argumentative Essay On Strategies For Combating Childhood Obesity

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Physical education is an important part of a child’s development and holistic education. Naturally it is important to note that children do not always feel attuned to such educational measures although it is also crucial to note that the development of the child’s body is also very important, especially at an early stage in life.

Government Regulation of Fast Food Argumentative Essays

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Vegetarianism, in essence, is the voluntary abstinence of a person from eating meat products. Vegetarianism has been shown to have tremendous health benefits as a practice, and is often employed as a more ethical and sustainable diet than carnivorous diets. It is a preferable lifestyle compared to being carnivorous or omnivorous, as it also means taking a stand against animal slaughter.

Example Of Vegetarianism Argumentative Essay

Vegetarianism, in essence, is the voluntary abstinence of a person from eating meat products. There are many different facets of vegetarianism, but the activity itself has been found in many cultures throughout human history. In Western cultures, in particular, it is finding significant support, as more and more people in America and other countries choose to eat only vegetables (and optionally dairy). Vegetarianism has been shown to have tremendous health benefits as a practice, and is often employed as a more ethical and sustainable diet than carnivorous diets. Because of these reasons, vegetarianism is a preferable lifestyle compared to being carnivorous or omnivorous.

Argumentative Essay On The Negative Effects Of Milk Consumption

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Argumentative Essay on Obesity in America
Argumentative Essay On Obesity
Argumentative Essay on Obesity in 600-700 words
Critical Essay: Cause of obesity essay
Obesity in America Essay
Obesity in America Essay

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Obesity in America: [Essay Example], 704 words GradesFixer
Introduction. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. In America, the prevalence of obesity has been steadily increasing over the past few decades, with currently around 42% of the population being classified as obese. Addressing this issue is significant as it has far-reaching impacts on both individual and ...
Argumentative Essay On Obesity: [Essay Example], 476 words
Argumentative Essay on Obesity. Obesity is a growing epidemic that has plagued societies around the world. With the rise of fast food chains, sedentary lifestyles, and a lack of education on proper nutrition, obesity rates have skyrocketed in recent years. While some argue that obesity is a personal choice and should not be seen as a public ...
Argumentative Essay on Obesity
About Myself Childhood Obesity Obesity. Essay type: Argumentative. Words: 1671. Pages: 4. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples.
Argumentative Essay About Obesity In America: A Bigger Issue Than We
Read Sample Obesity In America: A Bigger Issue Than We Think Argumentative Essays and other exceptional papers on every subject and topic college can throw at you. We can custom-write anything as well!
Essay on Obesity in America
The consequences of the obesity epidemic in America are wide-ranging and severe, impacting individuals, families, and society as a whole. From a health perspective, obesity is associated with a higher risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer. It also has psychological and social consequences ...
The Origins of the Obesity Epidemic in the USA-Lessons for Today
The obesity epidemic emerged in Westernized countries during the 1980s [ 3, 4 ]. Our best evidence is that this major event started a few years earlier in the USA, namely in 1976-1980 [ 5, 6 ]. Obesity is defined as a BMI ≥ 30. There was only a small rise (approximately 0.5%) in the prevalence of obesity among American adults in the years ...
Obesity
A 2015 paper in the American Journal of Public Health revealed the philosophical chasm that hampers America's progress on obesity prevention. It found that 72 to 98 percent of obesity-related media reports emphasize personal responsibility for weight, compared with 40 percent of scientific papers.
How to Write an Obesity Essay
Are you assigned to write an essay about obesity? Here are some essay topics and samples of obesity essay. Choose from 100 topics below for a successful essay.
Find Out How To Write A Great Argumentative Essay On Obesity
How to Approach Writing an Argumentative Essay on Obesity Obesity being a major problem in America is something that few will disagree with, but coming to an agreement on the solutions can be more difficult. The focus of any argumentative essay is to put forward a convincing case as to why your opinion should be the one that's followed.
Is Obesity a Disease? 5 Pros and Cons
Proponents say obesity meets the definition of 'disease.' Opponents say it is preventable and is the result of eating too much.
Obesity Argumentative Essay
Obesity Argumentative Essay. 653 Words3 Pages. America one of the most obese nations in the world today. Roughly two thirds of adults in the US are overweight, and half of those are considered obese, meaning they are twenty percent above their ideal body weight. Some people claim that obesity is in fact a disease and it is a condition that ...
Good Example Of Obesity In America Argumentative Essay
Read Our Obesity In America Argumentative Essays and other exceptional papers on every subject and topic college can throw at you. We can custom-write anything as well!
Obesity in America: Cause and Effect Essay Sample
The cause-effect relationship of obesity vividly illustrates the increasing threats to people. Such an essay on will motivate everyone to rethink their eating habits.
Argumentative Essay on Obesity in America
It is obligatory for some students to write an argumentative essay on obesity in America. By writing this work, youngsters learn the healthy eating rules and find new solutions to the extra weight problem.
PDF Running head: Childhood Obesity 1
that place low-income children at risk for developing obesity: environmental (i.e., lack of access to healthy affordable food and media exposure to commercials for junk food); psychological
Obesity Essay: Most Exciting Examples and Topics Ideas
Our topics base contains the most diverse topics of Obesity to write about in essays. Choose perfect titles and start to write your paper.
470 Obesity Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
Looking for obesity essay topics? Here we've gathered top obesity topics for presentation, research paper, or other project. 470 Obesity essay examples are an inspiring bonus!
Obesity Argumentative Essay Examples That Really Inspire
Sample Argumentative Essay On The Rising Obesity In America. (First Paragraph) Your Name, Your complete departmental and institutional affiliation. (Second Paragraph) Changes in your affiliation, if any. (Third Paragraph) Please enlist your acknowledgments, funding sources, special circumstances, etc.
Argumentative Essay: What Is Obesity Doing To America
In this essay the auhor will be giving you advice of how to solve the problem of obesity and what are different ways we can help people that are already obese. Since 1970 people all around America are becoming more and more obese and craving fast food more and more and the percentage is gaining every year in obesity.
What Is Obesity In America Persuasive Essay
What Is Obesity In America Persuasive Essay 674 Words3 Pages Obesity in America While people only live once, obesity is a big problem in the United States because diabetes has risen. Even though fat keeps people warm in the winter, the majority of americans are fat, which is still unhealthy.
Argumentative Essay: The Issue Of Obesity In America
Obesity in America is a big issue in society today because more than 60 percent of the population is overweight. People eat for many reasons, one being a source of comfort. When they the thing to someone eats for comfort reasons; they don't understand when they should stop. They eat lots of food to fill an empty void that is somewhere deep ...
What Is Obesity In America Persuasive Essay
Obesity In America Essay. 1646 Words | 7 Pages. Obesity is an excessive amount of accumulation and storage of fat in the body. Obesity is a "known, unknown" health disease many Americans struggle with each day. Americans often put obesity to the side and live life the best they can until daily routines.
Argumentative Essay On Obesity In America
Argumentative Essay On Obesity In America. America can be called the melting pot but can also be called the most obese country on the planet. In recent years there has been a rise in obesity, especially in youth. The reason might be because children don't do much physical activity, like playing outside.