Obesity in America is nationwide, claiming the mobility, health and youth of children on a grand scale. The most impacted areas are the working class and poorer areas of America that suffer the most when it comes to healthy efforts. An abundance of fast food restaurants and limited grocery stores cause healthy food knowledge to be very low. Low-income areas are left with little to no resources to promote healthy lifestyles.
Youth in urban areas have little access to healthy food choices, promoting an unhealthy way of living. Growing up the Bay Area, I have seen this first hand, surrounded by liquor stores, fast food, and street markets; I ate junk food every day of the week from morning to night. Studies show that children who are “…African American and Latino, living in poor neighborhoods, spend most of their time after school home alone." At a young age kids like me, classified as “doormat kids," have no way of receiving a cooked meal resulting in eating unhealthy food as the only option to survive.
Almost every fast food restaurant in urban areas are within a two to three-mile proximity of each other. However, grocery and produce establishments are more than five miles apart, making healthy options scarce making education on healthy living very scarce. The absence of knowledge allows children to eat as they please, which consists of not too healthy choices filled with sugar and fats that are not needed. In fact, statistics from the Center for Science in the Public Interest show us that the average child eats 80 to 230 more calories than needed per day. Ignorance is bliss, and the bliss turns into kids that are becoming overweight with no one with enough common sense to stop it.
Consequently families in these areas do not know what the food is doing to them when eaten in portions that are too large for any child or adult. When told about the effects of main foods like McDonald's burgers, Top Ramen noodles and other junk food selections, people where surprised by how much they didn’t know about these products. Not only are these foods bad in just their serving size, but they accumulate even more damage when eaten in excess, causing illnesses like high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes and heart problems. As a solution to this problem, Greg Critser, author of the article “Don’t Eat the Flan” writes on the topic suggesting, “Parents must control the dinner table; all portions must be moderate…”
Portion size plays a big role in how food affects the body, the label on the back of most products gives the total for the regulated portion size, which is more than doubled in actual serving sizes. This lack of health knowledge plagues the urban community with every bite while making the obesity statistic number climb day by day without limit.
Increased portion sizes have caused American waist lines and fast food lines to grow as well. As a way to show that, “more bang for the buck’ companies like Burger King shell out more food for a lesser money value with twenty of their chicken nuggets (if you want to call them that) for only one dollar and seventy-five cents. A product like this shows the youth that consuming a large portion of chicken nuggets is okay especially if it's cheap. Looking at the big picture, I have noticed there is no one in the media who is actively trying to change the way America is eating.
American culture is sadly filled with many bad habits, at the top of the list are our hours spent in front of the television screen. For example, I turn on the lounge television to see Lebron James one of the most sought after player of our time along with the top athletes of American culture partying and eating McDonald’s food as if it was good for their lifestyle. Watching this only shows that some people are only in it for the money, which is disastrous for a young nation growing under morals literally acted in front of them. In the article “The Relationship between Television Viewing and Unhealthy Eating,” researchers Jennifer L. Harris and John A. Bargh found that “children's food preferences are acquired through learning processes, and that these preferences have long-lasting effects on diet.” Not only does the problem of youth eating unhealthily fall upon parents, it falls upon our media force-feeding advertisements 24/7 on the television screen.
In America today we are in many times of crisis. Whether it is economic or international, we must correct the problem at home first. Urban areas are cluttered with over-populated living spaces, surrounded by unhealthy cheap food choices leaving no option or reason for healthy eating habits. Children nationwide are having less of a chance to better their lives as these problems continue. Without proper knowledge of what is the better ways to eat healthy and the dangers of unhealthy eating, the community will continue to unknowingly write their own death sentences.
