preview

Obesity And Its Effects On Obesity Essay

Decent Essays

In the United States obesity has become an enormous problem, both literally and figuratively. Americans have become larger, gaining weight at ever increasing amounts. This extra weight has become a burden, taking its toll on the health of individual Americans by making them vulnerable to a range of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, stroke, atherosclerosis, osteoarthritis, reproductive problems. As a result, public health officials, health policy makers, and the much of the health community have been paying increasing amounts of attention to this issue, from the formulation of school lunch policies that reduce the risk of obesity, to the implementation of “diet” or “low fat” products to counter the ever growing spread of obesity. Although obesity has become a hot topic among today’s policy makers and health officials, it is not a new phenomenon with trends of obesity being noted as far back as 50 years ago, when Douglas Coleman, a scientist who pioneered research in the pathophysiology of obesity, a investigated “how excess fat affect[ed] health and disease” in mice (Wood 16). At around the same time, changes in diet were occurring, leading many scientists to establish tentative links between these new energy sources and newly rising obesity rates. After half a century and the combined research of large parts of the health community, these shaky links have evolved into much stronger relationships.. In the past fifty years, changes in food consumption have led to a marked

Get Access