Daniel Weintraub Essay

As the obesity rate in America increases, people are pointing fingers at the fast-food industry. Teenagers, with the help of their parents, have filed lawsuits blaming fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s for their own health problems. However, parents, not the fast-food companies, are to blame for the amount of overweight children that are present today. They are the ones who teach their children eating and exercising habits, they are the ones who let their young consume unhealthy foods, they are the ones who allow their children to watch television and play on the computer for hours on end, it is obviously the parents fault for obesity in youth.

In the essay, “Don’t Blame the Eater”, David Zinczenko, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine, discusses the recent lawsuits against fast-food chains. He does not deny that there should be a sense of personal responsibility among the public, but has sympathy for the kid consumers because he used to be one. Zinczenko argues that due to the lack of nutritional facts and health warnings, it’s not so ridiculous to blame the fast-food industry for obesity problems.

Have you ever thought about suing a fast food restaurant because of how unhealthy is making your body? Well in his essay “Don’t blame the eater” David Zinczenko talks about children that are trying to sue McDonalds for making them fat. Growing up with divorced parents and a mother who worked long hours, Zinczenko was left with no other choice but to turn to fast food restaurants in order to sustain himself. He describes how it’s easy for kids to put on weight and turn obese by eating junk food. He argues that fast food restaurants are to be blame for people, especially children and teenagers, for their obesity. Honestly it is the parents fault. Is not like McDonalds put a gun to an individual’s head and forced them to eat their food. In my opinion I would have to disagree with David Zinczenko, it is your own fault and a parents fault and not these fast food places. Children are a parent’s responsibility. As a parent you take ownership on what your children eat. I know some parents do work long hours and find it very convenient to stop at a fast food drive through to feed that to their kids and themselves, but there is many things parents can do to guarantee that their children eat healthy.

In David Zinczenko’s article “Don’t Blame the Eater” he focuses on the fast food industry and their role in the increasing health and obesity issues of our nation’s children, as well as these issues potentially becoming a serious problem that we will all have to deal with if we collectively don’t do something about it now. When it comes to the topic of fast food, most of us can agree that it is not the best source of nutrition. It is unhealthy and can be the cause of many serious health issues with our children such as obesity related Type 2 diabetes, stomach ulcers and even heart disease, high cholesterol, sleep apnea or even cancer. We can even agree that fast-food diets are a major contributing factor to

Obesity has become increasingly more prominent in American society. It is also a major health issue affecting many adults and children in the US every year. In his article "Don't Blame the Eater," David Zinczenko sympathizes with children who are suing McDonald’s making them fat. In his own experience as a “latchkey kid”, he knows how easily fast food makes teenagers put on weight with a steady diet of fast food meals. Zinczenko argues that both lack of fast food alternative companies and lack of providing nutrition information contribute to childhood obesity.

Daniel Weintraub in the article,”The Battle Against, Fast Food Begins in the Home,” argues that parents are at fault for their children being overweight, not the fast food industry. Weintraub supports his argument by explaining why it’s the parents fault using data and research. The author’s purpose is to inform the reader that parents need to take responsibility for their actions so that people stop blaming others and stop obesity. The author writes in an informal tone for the adults with children in the home.

Because of parents using food as a reward, many children learn that being good means eating unhealthy. Combined with the advertising techniques used by the fast food industry, children begin to make a correlation between fast food and a reward. Ellen Gustafson further confirms that fast food contains “more refined grains, fats and oils and sugars than the 1980’s.” All of these components of fast food make it appealing to children. Furthermore, many parents do not have time to make healthy meals for their children because of our fast-paced society. As David Zinczenko relates in Don’t Blame the Eater, “lunch and dinner, for me, was a daily choice between McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut. Then, as now, these were the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal.” This is not a rare situation. Many parents work long hours and therefore encourage their kids to eat fast food instead of taking the time to teach healthy habits. This has the ripple effect of overeating and lack of exercise. Without exercise, many kids gain weight, become obese or are at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and asthma. (Childhood Obesity) Today, type 2 diabetes exists in 30% of childhood obesity. (Zinczenko 154) Gustafson further states in her presentation “1/3 of American children are overweight and obese.” When a child has obesity, their ability to participate in everyday activities like sports and play is inhibited, which means

As the Obesity rate in America is steadily increasing, people will continue to point fingers right at the fast food industries, but is that who really to blame or is it your parents for poor food choices(Weintraub)? Parents are a huge role in their child’s life and if you just let your children sit on the couch all day play on the computer, they will end up nowhere in life that is just my opinion. Research says 30 percent of our country’s residents are overweight, which means people are still not being healthy that’s when parents need to take matters into their own hands and buy actual food and not be cheap go fast food all the time(Sloviter). Also type 1 and 2 diabetes are at record highs and still rising at some point will be at a state

In his article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko argues that today’s fast food chains fill the nutritional void in children’s lives left by their overtaxed working parents. With many parents working long hours and unable to supervise what their children eat, Zinczenko claims, children today regularly turn to low-cost, calorie-laden foods that the fast food chains are too eager to supply. When Zinczenko himself was a young boy, for example, and his single mother was away at work, he ate at Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and other chains on a regular basis, and ended up overweight. Zinzenko’s hope is that with the new spate of lawsuits against the food industry, other children with working

In the article the “ The Battle Against Fast Food Begins At Home “ the author, Daniel Weintraub believes that the problem with obesity is the parents fault. The fast food industry are not the main culprit here. He supports these claims by showing statistics and data from studies done by scientists. He shows that if parents take action the restaurants can’t stop them. This is clear through the adults that take action and the ones who don’t.

obesity is okay and that it is not that big of a deal, they are wrong. There

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

In recent years there has been a growing epidemic of obesity, especially in America. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey posted on the Center for Disease Control website there are 12.5 million children from ages 2 through 19 that are obese. Many people are starting to complain that the commercials and ads for these restaurants are the result of such an incline in obesity. Although there have been current ad campaigns aiming at children to live a healthy life style there are still hundreds of advertisements that are putting restaurants in a sort of ultimatum position. Either restaurants change their advertisements or they improve their menus. In 1979 McDonalds debuted their world famous Happy Meals to the

“Research shows that this brand loyalty begins in children as young as two years old.” (mediaawareness) The reason this can be dangerous is because of the types of food our children eat. Foods like packaged cookies, salty soups, candy, and soda. The list runs much longer than this, but the reality is that these foods have things like added sugar, added salt, and trans fats that make the food taste “better”. Another really important fact to point out is that childhood obesity can be directly related to over consumption of fast foods. The average fast food cheeseburger contains about 500 calories. If you add an order of french fries then that is another 500 calories. Most active 5 year old children for example, should obtain about 1600 calories per day. So one meal from a fast food restaurant would equate to over half of the calories they should. (NCBI)

The commercials feature animated characters selling fast food kid meals. Children relate with the cartoon characters and want to eat the foods that are being promoted. Children receive the message that fast food is good for them, and do not understand that eating too much fast food can be unhealthy for them. Unfortunately the message from this type of advertising is geared toward the child thinking I need to have the fast food. This is a bad message to leave in children?s minds, because it can also cause problems with their health. The obesity rate in young children has risen drastically over the last twenty years. Health reports have attributed this to the continuing increase in the amount of fast food children are consuming. Television commercials for fast food are on every channel, and the number of channels has risen over the last twenty years. Children who watch television are exposed to a non-stop borage of commercials. This continual exposure promotes a cycle of the child always wanting to go to the fast food restaurants. Parents also are affected by the commercials. Their children want to eat fast food, and the fast food is very convenient for busy families. It is much easier to go through a drive-thru and order the food, then to cook the meal at home. This can be a harmful pattern for the family to establish. Convenience over a more healthy home cooked meal adds to the childhood obesity