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Obesity Epidemic Analysis

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Obesity has been a nationwide epidemic that has led to many concerns for current and future generations. Indeed, this is gearing more towards children than adults. Depending on age, height, and weight, people have a different Body Mass Index (BMI). Obesity could be considered the primary cause of many other illnesses such as Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, and even death. The American government has taken urgent action to the problems of obesity, and has looked at potential ways to fight the epidemic. For example, in the year 2013 America tried to implicate a new taxation law on unhealthy foods called the “Fat Tax”. Any foods that were high in fats were going to have higher tax rates. However, could this taxation really have …show more content…
With this lack of knowledge, the Fat Tax would have not made a difference, but if every person had some type of education and was able to understand nutrition facts and the amount of servings, then there would not have been as much obesity in America. However, since that is not the case, individuals would still buy fat foods because they would rather pay a little more for unhealthy foods, because they would not truly understand their nutrition facts. (Add more …show more content…
Will they reduce their obesity significantly or not? Statistics show that if the cost of food rises, then more people will start to shed pounds. For example, in the article “Should the U.S. Adopt a Fat Tax”, it is stated that “18 percent tax on pizza and soda would cause the average American to lose 5 pounds per year” (Kalaidis). This is not the best solution because reducing weight by 5 pounds a year is not a lot; Americans would still be obese. To see the actual results, individuals must manage a diet with good exercise. Without exercise people would still not obtain a healthy living style and still be overweight. Either way, if people do not consume fat foods they would still consume some sort of calories, but they have to get rid of those calories also by exercising. As stated in the journal article “Treatment of Pediatric Obesity”, “In order to have long-term success of obesity treatment, interventions for behavior change act in concert with the diet and exercise components. The major impact on energy balance occurs through decreasing caloric intake, so exercise should be combined with dietary intervention to lose weight” (Epstein). This would help to sustain a normal weight in the long-run. This could be considered a cycle, because people must eat the right amount of calories per day and exercise at least 30 minutes that day and repeat this every day of the week. By, just using the method of the “Fat Tax”, which would

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