The Aphrodite of Knidos: A Precedent of Female Vulnerability in the Visual Arts

Fast Food: Is It Really the Cause of Obesity?

Isabel Remedios

"For the first time in history, the poor are fat and the rich are thin," Jane Lorimer (2006) has noticed (p.26). As shocking as it is, this observation could not be more precise; obesity rates are escalating in proportions that the world has never seen. Obesity no longer afflicts only wealthy nations; it has now become prevalent in third world countries. Even more astounding is that it has even been suggested that overweight people outnumber undernourished people (Lorimer, 2006, p.26). How did this crisis happen? Many people believe the answer lies in one source: fast food chains. These days, it seems as though there is a McDonald's or Burger King wherever one goes in the United States, or for that matter anywhere in the world. Although these massive conglomerates do not exactly endorse a good diet, making fast food chains a scapegoat is oversimplifying the answer; fast food is not the sole reason for the billions of people who have become obese. There has to be a deeper cause. The recent increase in international obesity rates is not primarily due to the prevalence of fast food chains, but rather a complex matrix including agriculture, industrialization, and net income.

Origins and Spread of Obesity

For some time, obesity was a health issue that afflicted mainly wealthy continents, such as North America and Europe. Although obesity may have originated in the United States and other developed nations, it has now reached third-world countries (Prentice, 2005, p.93). Similar trends concerning rising obesity rates have been observed internationally. As countries become more developed and industrialized, obesity rates increase simultaneously. The World Health Organization (WHO) has analyzed modernization's effects saying:

As incomes rise and populations become more urban, diets high in complex

carbohydrates give way to more varied diets with a higher proportion of

fats, saturated fats and sugars. At the same time, large shifts towards less

physically demanding work have been observed worldwide. Moves towards

less physical activity are also found in the increasing use of automated

transport, technology in the home, and more passive leisure pursuits.

(Obesity and overweight)

Researchers Popkin and Gordon-Larsen (2004) have observed that these "shifts" are affecting the middle and lower classes at a rapid rate (p. 2). Prentice (2005) asserts, "The [obesity] pandemic is transmitted through the vectors of subsidized agriculture and multinational companies providing cheap, highly refined fats, oils, and carbohydrates, labour-saving mechanized devices, affordable motorized transport, and the sections of sedentary pastimes such as television" (p.93). These "vectors" are the major causes that will be explored in this paper, but there are also other interesting notions for the rise in obesity.

Ethnicity and Biology's Effects on Obesity

Although he gives concrete, substantial reasons, Prentice even says that cultural perception has affected obesity rates in some countries. In the United States, weight-gain is often undesirable and seen as a sign of ill-health. Most Americans strive to be thin because of social pressure. Whether through magazines, television commercials, or billboards the media continually bombards us to stay thin. Most of us are familiar with the slew of commercials that come at the beginning of every New Year; the ads that tell us that this is our year to lose weight, and that we should join a gym or start a new diet plan In many Polynesian and African cultures, however, thinness is often associated with infirmities such as AIDS and HIV (Prentice, 2005, p. 97). In various developing countries there is no "social pressure to be thin" and there is a "reduced social negativity toward obesity" (Prentice, 2005, p. 96). For example, Brewis, McGarvey, Jones, and Swinburn observed that Polynesians "associate large body size with power, beauty, and affluence" (cited in Prentice, 2005, p.96). Prentice (2005) believes this cultural perception of weight-gain is one of the reasons that obesity rates are so high in the Pacific Islands (p. 96). Nevertheless, this notion only applies to certain countries around the world, so we should not consider it one of the major factors for the spread of obesity.

Many times people hear overweight people blame their condition on genetics. Although the thrifty genotype hypothesis is somewhat recent, the "thrifty gene" itself most likely goes back hundreds of years in man's history. The gene, which allowed for more fat storage, was thought to be an adaptive mechanism to help man survive periods of famine. However, in most parts of the world today, food is readily available and starvation is not as big a threat. One could say, what at one point in history was a boon to survival has now become a bane to health. Nevertheless, many doctors and scientists do no see the thrifty genotype model as the main determinant of weight gain (Candib, 2007). As far as genetics and obesity are concerned, Bray provides this insightful analogy: "The genetic background loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger" (cited in Candib, 2007, p.550). We are currently living in a world which promotes a calorie-rich diet and an inactive lifestyle. Agriculture, industrialization, and net-income work en masse to bolster this obesogenic environment.