Michelle Tomenchok Essays - Health, Obesity, Personal Life

Michelle Tomenchok Robin Mako Citarella English I How Food Addiction Causes Obesity More Americans become obese every year, with almost two thirds of the current US population today considered obese. But Why? Michael Moss explores in his essay "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" how corporations are altering the food we eat in an effort to get more market share. This altering or processing of foods had made them more addictive. Moss examines how the corporations use that addiction to their advantage, however Moss fails to touch on why this processing works. We will explore how these processed foods affect the human body by looking at environmental factors, the learned response or addiction to foods, the emotional state of eating and finally how obesity prevents weight loss. In order to understand how the human body is affected by processed foods we must first examine how environmental factors can affect our eating habits. The issue of environmental influences is important because we must understand how the world around us affects our food choices. Moss touches on the most basic environmental factor associated with food consumption , the advertising used by large corporations. Advertising and marketing is a well-studied field and is used to target specific audiences to purchase products . What was not explored however, is when this advertising is used to target young children. Just watch any Saturday morning cartoon and you will be inundated with commercials for high sugar cereals marketed by cartoon characters touting how great the cereal is or how cool you will be by eating it. Pomeranz explores this adverting to children in depth in "Television Food Marketing To Children Revisited: The Federal Trade Com mission Has The Constitutional And Statutory Authority To Regulate ." Her research shows that children exposed to advertising eat more of these foods than children who have not been exposed to such advertising. In describing her research she state, " Because the vast majority of food marketed to children is unhealthy, the net effect is that children are developing poor nutrition-related beliefs and behaviors as a result of their exposure to such communication" (Pomeranz, 99). This is important because young children under the age of 12 or 13 are most vulnerable to this advertising . She further explains that , "Marketing practices directed at a vulnerable population creates the condition that the intended listener is being misled. Since studies show that young children cannot comprehend the persuasive intent of marketing' and tend to accept commercial claims and appeals as truthful and accurate" (Pomeranz, 03). This quote helps to understand how adverting inf luences the food choices being made by young children . Advertising is only one factor in the environment that affects our purchasing of processed foods and in turn becoming more obese. Americans are only exposed to such adverting because of the changes in modern life. David R Seamon, a professor at the National University of Health Sciences , studied how weight gain is a consequence of living that modern lifestyle . I describing this research he said, "the modern lifestyle is associated with several behavioral factors that facilitate weight gain, such as eating too quickly, a lack of sleep, high stress levels and a lack of physical activity" (Seaman, 28). This is important because these factors alter the metabolism. When looking at stress specifically, historically, high stress levels in early humans signaled danger . When in danger humans fled that danger and in turn burned more calories. In modern times, these calories are no longer being burned off and are instead being retained and causing weight gain. A recent article written by two PhD's, Michael A Pizzi and Kerryellen Vroman also explored obesity in children and found that " factors such as domestic violence within a family or high stress due to chronic illness of a parent or guardian can result in children feeling they have little or no control. In order to suppress fear, concern, worry and anxiety the child may overeat" (105). This helps support the position that stresses in the environment from our family life or our work lives affect our eating habits and promote obesity. In addition to environmental factors, the learned response or addiction to certain