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Angelica NortonProfessor HoweENGL 1010March 4, 2015Argument EssayRadley Balko writes an article dealing with the issues of personal responsibility as a factor towards obesity in America. Balko explains that it’s our responsibility to choose what we want to eat and how much we should eat. As Americans we shouldn’t depend on government to be supportive towards spending millions of dollars on bike trails, more labels on food, and restrictive food marketing in order to be healthy. We have the freedom to choose whether to eat healthy or not. By focusing on lack of personal responsibility as a cause of obesity, Balko overlooks the deeper problem of how our eating behaviors are culturally determined by advertisements, fast food companies, and bullies.Advertisements are placed everywhere, it’s hard to ignore them, especially if you’re hungry. Advertisers will do their job by making your mouth water with hunger as you look at the perfectly made cheeseburger. As we all know, none of the pictures in the advertisements are an exact duplicate of the food. We keep buying the cheeseburger because it’s cheap and fast. Advertisers will always place big numbers and letters of good deals that fast food restaurants offer, making it low cost and sufficient to buy. A study research by Yale University found the average teenager sees 15 advertisements of food per day, 45% of teenagers will eat during or after they’ve seen an ad (Taylor). Again, avoiding advertisements is impossible and it influences what we choose to eat. Michael Pollan stated in his article about taking time to sit down to enjoy our meals affects obesity, “In order to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance…” (Pollan). Our culture is based on money and time; time equals money. Americans don’t take the time to sit down and actually enjoy a meal when we’ve got places to be. As a solution to our fast pace industry, we have enough time to grab a meal from a nearby fast food joint around the corner, scarf it down and proceed to the next errand on the list. Fast food may seem cheaper than buying food from a grocery store. Money is a big factor towards eating. Many Americans choose to buy fast food because it’s something convenient for their budget. The fast food industry makes it easy and accessible to buy a meal for an affordable price, making it easy to choose between cheap greasy meals or a pricey home made meal. David Zinczenko addresses the problem in his article, Escape from the Western Diet. The Western Diet is based on fast food and how they’re easily accessible. Zinczenko makes a point, if you’re driving down a road in a city, all you’re going to see are fast food restaurants, but if you drive around again to look for a healthy alternative, you wouldn’t find it compared to fast food places (Zinczenko).According to a few articles, our spending is all in the mind, we can purchase groceries for more quantity than fast food can offer. Stepfanie Romine did an experiment called, $20 Food Showdown: Fast Food vs. Healthy Food. In her article she buys products from fast food restaurants and makes an equivalent purchase to items bought from the store. One of the examples was an order from a pizza restaurant: one large pepperoni pizza and breadsticks for the price of $19.98. From the grocery story she was able to buy seven items for the price of $18.66, the items included: sausage, peanut butter, green tea, ground turkey, tilapia fillets, lentils, and crackers (Romine).Another cultural determination factor is bullies. Bullying can lead to obesity from children and teens using food as emotional comfort. Bullies will target obese children and teens making it hard for them to accept their bodies and to live without any worries. Becoming obese doesn’t come naturally, there are many risk factors that develop into obesity such as: family style and social issues (Obesity). Bullies define people by culture; social media websites, magazines, advertisements, celebrities, and news lead to the idea of the perfect body image. The determination of skinny vs. fat tells us, if you’re skinny you obtain beauty and health. If you’re fat, then you’re obese, ugly, and have medical issues. With this “rule” it’s makes it an easy target for obese teenagers to become a victim of bullying. A survey was taken by 361 teenagers, it found, “64% said they'd been bullied or teased at school because of their weight, but only 20% said it happened often or very often. The perpetrators included teachers (27 %), physical education teachers or coaches (42%) and parents (37%)” (Dotinga). With this information it’s critical that obese teenagers have support, to let them know it’s not entirely their fault and we shouldn’t let the media tell us what’s healthy or unhealthy. Personal responsibility is a factor towards obesity, but we shouldn’t let cultural determination such as: advertisements, fast food, and bullies influence what we eat. We should eat what we want because we personally think it’s healthy and not some ad that told us it’d satisfy the hunger. We’ve determined that home meals are cheaper and healthier than buying fast food and it allows us to take time to enjoy our meal. Opinions from others about weight and body size shouldn’t matter, as long as we eat healthy to function our bodies.Works CitedBalko, Radley. "What You Eat Is Your Business." They Say/I Say. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 395-98. Print.Dotinga, Randy. "Overweight Teens Report High Rates of Bullying, Teasing." ConsumerHealthDay. Health Day, 26 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <;."Obesity." Risk Factors. Mayo Clinic, 13 May 2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2015. <, Michael. "Escape from the Western Diet." They Say/I Say. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 434-40. Print.Romine, Stepfanie. "$20 Food Showdown: Fast Food vs. Healthy Food." SparkPeople. Spark People, 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <, Julie. "More About FOOD." Are Fast-Food Adverisers Playing You? Fit SanfordWebMD, 11 Jan. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <, David. "Don't Blame the Eater." They Say/I Say. 2nd ed. New York:W.W. Norton, 2012. 391-93. Print. ................
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