Obesity in North America

In western countries like Canada and the United States, fast food is an increasingly popular replacement for healthy home-cooked meals. Canada and the United states have been called the “fast food” nations because it makes up an unhealthy and substantial amount of North American diets due to busy schedules. It is normal for people in North America to work ten hours a day, five days a week and on top of that have many extra activities that don’t allow them to take the time to properly concentrate on their eating habits. Fast food companies have catered to these schedules by creating more accessible and increasingly fast service restaurants. Due to this, fast food and obesity have become closely related issues. There are many other illnesses besides obesity that are the result of fast food intake.

Fast food has become so important in today’s society, because for the main part it is an issue of convenience. In today’s, always on the move society, McDonalds and other fast food chains take advantage of our all too hectic nature. Fast food in Canada and the United States is readily available much more than in other countries in the United Kingdom or in Europe. Though fast food is a growing issue in Europe and the United Kingdom it is a larger issue in North America because of the reliance on it in society. An example of how available fast food chains are is, Manhattan Island is approximately 13 miles long by 2 miles wide but contains 89 McDonalds restaurants. That’s roughly one McDonalds in every four blocks.

Fast food has lately become a much more popular source for food in the twenty first century than it ever was in the past. One in four Americans visits a fast food restaurant a day. Since 1980, the total number of obese Americans has doubled. This includes twice as many overweight children and three times as many overweight adolescents. In American between the years of 1996 and 1998, 25 000 new fast food companies opened. This made the fast food companies a 103 billion dollar industry.

Obesity has become only second to smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in America. Obesity isn’t the only illness that occurs from fast food, there is a high risk for type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, some cancers and gallbladder disease. Due to these risks there are 400 000 deaths per year due to related illnesses. Diabetes has become and increasingly serious health problem especially among children because it can be directly linked to consumption of fast food. Diabetes is a result of fast foods’ high salt and trans fat levels, which are serious problems in the hopes of overcoming this illness.

There are also psychological problems that can arise and functional limitations like fatigue that are associated with excess weight. Nearly 100 million Americans are either over weight or obese. That’s more than 60% of all US adults. The Canadian Community Health Survey recently showed results that 23.1% of Canadians aged 18 or older, an estimated 5.5 million adults, had a body mass index of 30 or more, indicating that they were obese. This number only takes into consideration people who are obese not overweight. Another 36.1% of the population, or 8.6 million, were overweight. This number has grown significantly from the 2003 self reported data, which concluded that 15.2% of the population was obese. Though the number of Americans that are obese far exceeds that of Canadians, the percentage of the total population that is overweight or obese is almost equal. With the number of fast food chains increasing and the number of obese people in North America increasing at the same time and rate it is evident that there is a close relationship between the two. There is a huge problem with Canadian and American’s health as a result of their poor eating habits.

The amount of intake of McDonalds that people are generally having far exceeds that of any healthy diet. According to health Canada no healthy diet should include more than 30 percent of calories and fat and even less than this in trans fat. Fast food diets don’t