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The Obesity Era By David Berreby

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More than one third of U.S. adults are obese along with nearly a fourth of the children. As someone raised in the United States, I was surrounded by the harsh fact of obesity; those within my own family have been drastically affected by it. I have seen them struggle with it and I know how hard losing weight can be and even how easy gaining it can be. Many times I witnessed the battle and how many are unable to overcome it, but I have also seen people through hard work, exercise, and dieting, lose the weight and keep it off. Many people I know speak of causes for their obesity. Their excuses range from their genes to even the chemicals in their environment. In “The Obesity Era,” David Berreby persuasively supports his claim that an outside factor is the cause of obesity; however, Berreby loses his audience when he neglects to acknowledge the prior successes that show that weight loss comes from hard work, diet, and exercise In Berreby’s “The Obesity Era,” it is claimed that obesity is not the fault of the person but the fault of an outside factor. Berreby wrote about the report done by David B Allison and his coauthors at the University of Alabama in Birmingham that found that as the average weight of the American people increased so did the average weight of many animal species. Berreby used this research to show that if the weight of both humans and many animal species increased then there must be an outside factor causing the increase in average weight of humans.

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