Fast Food Today
Health experts have been saying for years that fast
food is bad for people. In February 2003, a filmmaker named Morgan
Spurlock decided to perform an experiment to see if that claim was true.
He wanted to find out what would happen to his body if he ate nothing
but fast food for thirty days.
Spurlock ate every breakfast, lunch, and dinner at McDonald’s. He ate
everything on the menu at least once, including hamburgers, french
fries, and chicken nuggets. Anytime the person behind the counter asked
if he wanted the biggest—“Supersize”—meal, he said yes. Spurlock and his
doctors tracked what happened to his body. He made a movie of the whole
experience, called Super Size Me (2004).
At the end of one month, Spurlock’s body had changed significantly.
He had gained twenty-five pounds (eleven kilograms). He felt tired all
the time, and his cholesterol—the fatlike substance that clogs arteries
and can lead to heart attacks—had skyrocketed. He had more of the fats
called triglycerides in his blood, and his liver was damaged. His doctor
told him that if he didn’t stop his experiment soon, he could die.
Spurlock’s movie received much attention from film critics and
moviegoers. It also caused quite a bit of debate. Health experts said it
proved that fast food is unhealthy. People in the fast-food business
said it was just a crazy stunt Spurlock did to get people to see his
film. What happened to Morgan Spurlock’s body doesn’t prove that fast
food is unhealthy. Eating fast food for every meal is pretty
extreme—most people don’t eat nearly that much. But two things are
certain. Americans are eating more fast food than they used to eat. And,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
people in the United States are fatter, and unhealthier, than they were a
few decades ago.
The Obesity Epidemic
| Every single day, one out of three young people aged four to nineteen eats fast food. |
Children eat five times more fast food today than
they did in 1970, as reported in a 2004 study published in Pediatrics.
Every single day, one out of three young people aged four to nineteen
eats fast food.
At the same time, Americans are gaining weight. Almost 20 percent of
children aged six and up were overweight in 2003–2004, according to the
CDC. That’s three times more overweight children than in the late 1970s.
Health experts call this big rise in the number of overweight children
an epidemic.
Being overweight can lead to many health problems, such as type 2
diabetes. People who have type 2 diabetes cannot utilize the hormone
insulin, which helps the body’s cells convert the sugar from foods into
energy. When you are overweight, your body has more trouble using
insulin. There is also type 1 diabetes, which is caused by a problem
with the immune system that damages the cells that make insulin.
However, type 1 diabetes is not related to being overweight.
Before 1994, only about 5 percent of children with diabetes had the
type 2 kind. But because there are more overweight kids today, 30 to 50
percent of children with diabetes have the type 2 kind, according to the
National Diabetes Education Program.
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Why do young people seem to be heavier—and
unhealthier—than ever before? One reason is that they’re not moving as
much as they used to. They get a ride to school instead of walking. They
play video games instead of sports. They also don’t get as much
exercise in school. In 1991, almost half of U.S. students took physical
education class in school every day. In 2003, only 28 percent took daily
gym classes, according to the CDC.
There’s also the lure of television. The CDC says that young people
between the ages of eight and eighteen sit in front of the TV for more
than three hours each day. That’s time they could have spent playing or
exercising. Watching television is not only making children gain weight,
it’s also making them want to eat foods that aren’t good for them.
Selling Fast Food to You
If you’re like most young people, you watch a whopping forty thousand
TV commercials per year, according to The Handbook of Children and
Media. Most of those ads are for toys, cereals, candy, and fast food.
Fast-food restaurants spend millions of dollars a year on their
commercials. In the ads, they try to get your attention with clowns and
fun characters from your favorite movies and TV shows. They make the
burgers, fries, shakes, and other foods that they sell look delicious.
Ads aren’t the only way fast-food restaurants try to get your
attention. Many of them have playgrounds. They have special meals for
children, and they put toys in their kids’ meals from movies such as
Spider-Man 2 and Shrek. They do these things to get you to buy their
food.
Getting the Balance Right
It’s hard to resist fast-food restaurants. After all, the food tastes good. The meals don’t cost much. Your friends probably go there to eat and ask you to come along.
It’s easy to go to fast-food restaurants because they’re everywhere.
You can find them in school cafeterias, airports, malls, and
hospitals—just about anyplace you look. Eating fast food is OK once in a
while. If you make healthy choices at fast-food restaurants, like
ordering salads with low-fat dressing or deli sandwiches instead of
burgers, you can eat there more often without a problem.
Remember that your body needs many different types of foods to stay
healthy. You need to eat fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish, lean meats,
milk products, and grains. If you eat fast-food burgers, fries, and
shakes every day, you won’t be getting the proper nutritional balance.
You may end up with a lot of extra weight and health problems, just as
Morgan Spurlock did.
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