Childhood Obesity Epidemic: The Junk Food Industry

This essay compares Michael Moss’ “Junk Food” to Virginia Heffernan’s “What If You Just Hate Making Dinner”. Both of these authors write about food, and they specifically discuss the topic of junk food. The key difference between these articles is that Heffernan looks at the topic from the point of view of a consumer, a busy mother seeking a convenience; and Moss focuses more on the food and beverage industry and its impact on the consumers. Many industry professionals, doctors and scientists alike are concerned about spreading obesity epidemic. The similarities between “Junk Food” and “What If You Just Hate Making Dinner” are pronounced, and they deserve thorough investigation.

In the article of How Junk Food Can End Obesity, David Freedman, the contributor editor at the Atlantic and Inc. Magazines, lays out a “they say” that then frames his argument. He states that making processed food healthier can contribute to the battle of the obese in our society. Freedman also says that the food these companies are cooking are making people sick and how it is destructive to an individual’s health. For instance, in the reading, Freedman states a quote from Michael Pollan, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, “It is one of the reasons that we have the obesity and diabetes epidemics that we do… If you’re going to let industries decide how much salt, sugar and fat is in your food, they’re going to put in as much as they possibly can… They will push those buttons until we scream or die.” In other words, Pollan believes that we constantly let people put all of these things in our foods but no one is stopping it.

Childhood obesity is a serious medical condition that is affecting children and adolescents. It occurs when a child is well above the normal weight for his or her age and height and can result in serious medical conditions. The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased significantly over the past ten years. Childhood diabetes has been on the rise since the early 90’s and continues to rise. In the article, “Don’t Blame the Eater” David Zinczenko, shows that “ Before 1994… only about 5 percent of childhood cases were obesity-related, or Type 2, diabetes. Today...Type 2 diabetes accounts for at least 30 percent of new childhood cases of diabetes in this country” (463). Type 2

Judging from the title of David Freedman’s “How Junk Food Can End Obesity” published in The Atlantic, Freeman's audience, the upper middle class of America, conjures up an image of a crazy Freedman throwing away every piece of scientific data that shows junk food is hazardous to your health. However, this is not the case. Freedman brings to light a more compromising approach to solving America’s obesity problem. His opinion is that by manufacturing healthier fast food we can solve America’s obesity issue and that his method would be able to be established nation-wide in a cheaper, fast and more effortless way than some other methods proposed. Not all, but the majority of The Atlantic’s audience cares about

Whether or not a person wants a burger and french-fries’ or a salad from the salad bar, the decision should be up to him/her. Two articles share views on food, “What You Eat Is Your Business” by Radley Balko and “Junking Junk Food” by Judith Warner. These two authors wrote articles about how they felt about food and how it’s related to obesity. However, Radley Balko would not approve of Judith Warner’s views on food for the reason that the two authors have different viewpoints on the aspect of the government helping people to make better food choices. Warner and Balko also has different views on the ideas which are that eating is a psychological matter; and eating healthy should be a personal matter.

Childhood obesity is not just an issue in United States- it is an growing epidemic. Obesity epidemic in kids has increased by alarming rate just in last few decades. Nearly one in every five child is obese in the United States. If the pattern of obesity continued on most of America’s children will be living with diabetes, heart disease, and dying young due to obesity. The American Heart Association reported this year that childhood obesity is the top health concern among parents in the United States, beating out smoking and drug abuse. My own younger siblings suffer with child obesity. Their craving for fast food and very limited physical activity has made them overweight and currently they suffer from health problems. Is this the future of our young generation? How much contribution should a parent have in their child’s diet? Fast food has taken over American diet and it has lead to poor nutritional diet among American youth. Fast food companies spend billion of dollars every year on commercials, convincing youth to love and eat their product. It’s just not our eating habits that has lead our young generation into obesity, lack of physical workout has also played a major role in obesity epidemic. TV, computer, video games and other technology entertainment has contributed to children getting no exercise. Obesity in children can put them in high risks of developing chronic and serious illness. Unhealthy weight leads to having weaker lungs, poor blood quality, heart

“They (Food Production Corporations) may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat.” (Moss 346). In today’s society, junk food needs no introduction as everyone enjoys the taste of junk food because it is fast, tasty, and affordable but not everyone knows what all goes into their food. Over the years the food industries have drastically changed how food is produced and manufactured. Moss reflects upon the motivations and practices by the food industries which have transformed the American food supply by the use of the three key ingredients, salt, sugar, and fat. Through Michael Moss’s use of rhetorical appeals in his book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, he discusses the extraordinary science behind what is considered tasty food, how multinational food companies use the key ingredients, salt sugar, and fat to increase sales and how other literary elements can help create trust between the author and audience thus increasing the effect of his arguments.

Apart from the economic and institution driven implications of obesity on the Canadian federal system, the issue of obesity also targets the social circle of Canadian media, culture, values and global reputation. If the federal government does not take an active step in the stop against unhealthy eating, bad life style choices and obesity then the problem will continue to escalate. Public policy can be used to bring awareness to issues that effect and benefit many. There was an important study documented in the European journal of public health that suggests, “one in three obese children might not have been obese in the absence of advertising for unhealthy food on TV. Limiting the exposure of children to marketing of energy-dense food could be part of a broader effort to make children 's diets healthier”(Veerman 1). This shocking statistic is directly linked to the normalization of obesity and an unhealthy diet that the media has continued to promote.

In Hans Taparia and Pamela Koch’s New York Times online article “A Seismic Shift in How People Eat,” posted on November 6, 2015, the current struggle that big food companies are experiencing in relation to increased consumer awareness is discussed. Prompting this article is the overwhelming movement to healthy eating by the general populace and the havoc it is wreaking on corporate companies. Highly popular among health enthusiasts of all ages, the topic of this paper appeals to a wide audience. Although easily missed at first due to the beautiful flow and structure of the paper, the opinions and claims by Taparia and Koch are primarily based in logos where facts and statistics are quoted, and a fair amount of pathos where vivid imagery is utilized to paint a picture of the scenario for the reader. Differing slightly from the normal presentation, the ethos of the paper is not so much enforced through personal titles or anecdotes, but rather through the combination of presenting the ideas and facts clearly and persuasively, all adding to the author’s credibility. When the paper comes to a conclusion, the reader is left with a solid understanding of how big food companies are finally being forced to share their dirty secrets and clean up their act in order to compete with the small scale, organic based companies and the jeopardy they are facing unless they change their ways drastically.

Adapted from his book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”, the article “The Extraordinary Science of Junk Food” presents famed Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Moss’s chronicle of how the junk food ‘giants’ developed techniques to hook the population of the country onto their products by using addictive ingredients, expansive product lines and seductive marketing techniques. Since an initial spark of interest, Moss has interviewed over 300 former and current members of the processed food industry. From C.E.O.s to Scientists. From Marketers to Whistle-blowers. Over four years of research was conducted by Moss to figure out why startling health facts were not enough to change the Public’s bad diet. Nine of these interviews were

The way we eat has changed in the last fifty years with the advent of science and technology. Not only is food being chemically engineered but also the wrong foods are opted for because of their convenience, their marked down prices and their addictive nature. For that matter, the commencement of the 21st century brought our attention to the childhood obesity epidemic. Although a widespread issue, it is also a discriminative one in the sense that specific groups--African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians -- are disproportionately affected.

Is Greed actually not of a financial use rather than a emotional use. If so would employees who work at fast-food establishments or even major corporate heads of these billion dollar fast-food chains allow their own children to indulge themselves in them, knowingly aware of the vast risks they could embark on later in life due to their unhealthy choices? David Zinczenko brings up valid points on how fast-food is harmful to one’s body in “Don’t Blame the Eater,”. Zinczenko is able to effectively argue against the manipulation of the food industry by showing the reader that the consumer is the victim while the food industry is the one to blame. His use of questioning, personal appeals, imagery, direct tone and colorful diction results in a compelling case that supports his accusations of manipulation by the fast food industry.

Political activist Yves Engler’s article “Obesity: Much of the Responsibility Lies with Corporations,” blames corporate capitalism for the obesity of children. Engler urges the government to put tighter limits on fast-food marketing not allowing them to reach the youth of America. Also Engler proposes that availability of junk food in the school system should decrease. Engler writes about how the government could help the obesity rate in children by creating more parks and funding physical education programs in public schools. Engler and Zinczenko both talk about the government’s ability to intervene in the fast-food industry, and both offer valid solutions. Engler talks about the

country alone, 17% of all children and adolescents are now obese, triple the rate from

Patterson and Johnston (2012) describe the political-economic attitude to food production as an all-consuming quest for corporate control and surplus maximisation (Patterson, 2012). As a result, the global food economy often comes at the detriment of public health, of which obesity is quickly gaining rank. Through the use of technology, advertising presents a contradictory call-to-action by promoting the need to go out and purchase fast-food yet necessitating a sedentary lifestyle (Hillier, 2008). From a Marxist point of view, this unprecedented access to technology is essential for capital development. However, Patterson et al. (2012) believes that the media draws on scientific prompts from the medical society and filters and reconstructs these to reach their own idealistic goals (Patterson, 2012). They suggest that rates of obesity are altered because the individual is seen as both a channel for maximising food consumption and a facilitator of the health and beauty industry, creating a link to neo-liberalism (Patterson, 2012). This highlights obesity as a social issue as they ‘often involve what Marxists call ‘contradictions’ (Mills, 2010:7).