Jeremy Diaz
Eric Drown
English 122
October 21, 2018
When reading the “XXXL: Why are we fat” article a big question appeared to me. Initially, I wondered how we can get big corporations such as Mc Donalds or Burger King to change their ways. Would we need to cut them out of our diet a little or should we boycott them completely? I eventually decided to move on from that question because I noticed that there hasn’t been any significant positive change in fast food ever. If they have not changed yet, why would they change for people’s health now. Many other questions came to mind and I continued to read Kolbert’s article. I read interesting facts about rapid weight gain and Kolbert pointed out some possible reasons for this weight gain. I eventually came to the point where I was wondering why these people who run the fast food industry aren’t doing anything to help people with weight when it is primarily their fault. I realized that fast food won’t change so it is us that must change, but how? Should we stop eating fast food altogether?
What I have come to realize from Kolbert’s work is that people are gaining weight at an unhealthy amount and nobody can find out why. They went back and checked genetics to see if there had ever been a time before when people gained weight at such an unhealthy amount as we’ve seen in recent years and there is no correlation. The only major change we can see in both now and back then is that we now have fast food. Therefore, this could be the cause for major weight gain. Back then people actually had to do hard labor to have good food. If you wanted chicken, you had to raise it and then kill it yourself. On top of that you would have to take all the feathers off and cook it yourself. Now people just go to the super market pick up a pack of ribs and throw it on the grill. In other words, it takes little to no work to get the food you so desperately want. So, I encourage people to at least find the healthiest way to prepare food and cook it ourselves. Yes, it is more time consuming and a little more expensive, but I think having a better body and feeling healthy is worth the investment.
Obviously fast food restaurants wouldn’t agree with my claim because it would take away from their income and business. These restaurants wouldn’t be willing to switch up their menu because if people want a healthy meal like a salad then they already know where they want to go for that. The same goes for if someone wants a quick order of a burger and fries. They know that they want to go to Wendy’s or McDonalds and so on. So clearly even if fast food restaurants wanted to change it would affect their business and therefore gives them no reason to change unless they start losing money selling what they are now. This is one reason why we must give up fast food. They won’t change unless they are forced to, and the power is in our hands.
Now that I had a general idea that fast food was one of if not the main contributor to rapid weight gain over the past couple years I wanted to know why people wouldn’t just stop eating it. In Kolbert’s article she introduces a new argument when Kessler begins to say some people have an addiction to eating food. Kessler argues “Foods like Cinnabon and Starbucks strawberries and cream Frappuccino are like drugs.” He also compares this to the addiction of gambling. It is similar to high risk high reward. People know that there is a high risk to gambling but they do it anyway because if they are successful there is a high reward. For food there is always the reward of enjoying the taste of what you are eating but at the same time you are always putting your health at a high risk. The people Kessler is trying to reach here is fast food eaters as well as nutritionist. If fast food eaters hear this maybe they will be more cautious with the amount of fast food, they eat weekly. Nutritionist can use this as leverage when advising people what to eat and what is bad to eat. Hopefully by hearing about this some people who can’t stop eating these unhealthy foods everyday will try to reach out for help and be more cautious with what they are eating.
Kessler’s argument that food is like a drug is true. Maybe some people will say that they could stop eating junk food every day and stick to a healthy meal plan, but you don’t realize how much unhealthy things you eat until you actually have to give it up. These are the things that make food “taste good” to us and add flavoring. There also certain ingredients added that will make you want to have more. I was doing some personal research online and stumbled upon an interesting fact. When reading on eatthis.com they introduced this to me; “refined carbs, fat, salt and sugar—the four primary ingredients in fast food—are downright addicting.” These restaurants literally put ingredients in the food so that your body wants to have more and more of it. In a way that’s kind of sick. Eatthis.com also had some information on a study done on mice. The study website reports, “Studies show that mice who have been fed diets with high levels of those very nutrients display withdrawal symptoms and are more sensitive to stressful situations after they were put on a more healthful diet.” It’s clear that what happened to these mice is the same thing happening to us and these restaurants don’t even want us to notice. Why should we continue to support them if they don’t care about our wellbeing? The answer is we shouldn’t at all.
At first, I thought to myself in order to get people to boycott these fast food places, I would have to find a way to convince them that the food isn’t good for them. But some people don’t care about how healthy the food is so then I realized I would have to prove to them that these fast food industries didn’t care about their health in multiple ways. There are multiple examples of this within Kolbert’s article, one of the main one’s being that the calories in the food has increased over time. Kolbert provides evidence of this with research that states “Before McDonalds discovered the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of french-fries which contained two hundred calories. Today a small order of fries contains two hundred and thirty calories.” This is a clear sign that they don’t care about people’s health and wellbeing. It also correlates with what I read on eatthis.com about the four main ingredients being addictive. The food shows no sign of changing anytime soon either. This goes back to why we must change our eating habits and our diets. There is clear evidence that the food itself has addictive products within it and it’s not like these products are good for our bodies. We need to fuel our bodies with the right things and get a good balance which we don’t receive when eating fast food.
I know that fast food places won’t change for the better because if they were going to they would have done it a long time ago. Kolbert introduces some facts that show people have been getting weight at an unhealthy amount over the past couple years based on research. She states, “in the early nineteen sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight.” Kolbert eventually explains “During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had balloon; 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight.” McDonalds, among other fast foods, should have taken these facts into account back then and changed what goes into their foods so it could be a little healthier. But they didn’t change back then and won’t change their methods anytime soon. Instead, they feel as if they put more into the food that people will instead feel like they are getting a bargain and continue to eat at their restaurant and making them money. If people realize this is who they are buying from and supporting then they will feel a sense of urgency to discontinue their support of these food chains.
Overall I believe people need to wake up and see that they need to cut back on all the fast food they are eating if not cut it out of their diet completely. Everyone deserves to be healthy, but you can’t accomplish that if you are not eating properly. The fast food chain will never change what it is serving to us because that bad food is the product they’re sell as well as what they make their money off of. If someone wants a healthy meal they know where they want to go for that. Same thing goes for if someone wants something quick and greasy they will go to a fast food restaurant. They know people will keep coming and eating their food because of their ingredients that cause cravings. We need to fight this crave for that food and pick something to eat that will be good for our bodies in the long run. Since they will never change we must change our lifestyle and eating habits or else the numbers of obese people will just continue to increase. If we fight off the urge to eat these bad foods people will be in a much better place physically and mentally. It will also set up better eating habits for the future generations but it starts with us now.
