Obesity: a disease of diseases

With all that is said about health care and health concerns in this country, it is important to point out the dangers of obesity in any population. Obesity is like a dirty sink. You cannot use the sink to clean the dishes until you clean the sink. For those who are overweight and face serious health risks, it is difficult to fight their diabetes or heart disease unless they lose their excess weight or undergo risky bariatric surgery. Americans are getting fatter than ever thanks to several factors.

First, our diets are terrible. Even in these difficult economic times when corporations record continuous losses, fast food companies such as McDonalds continue to report quarterly earnings. Even the food we buy at the supermarket is rich in starch and sugar. High fructose corn syrup is a cheap sugar substitute and is much more destructive to your body, since it is more difficult to break down in your body than sugar. Most products that should include natural sugar now include high fructose corn syrup. At the end of the 19th century, an average American consumed 13 grams of sugar every day. Today, the average American consumes more than two hundred grams of sugar every day. Sugar is in almost everything, and that amount of sugar is not healthy.

With our addiction to fatty foods we must also include the psychological aspect of why we are an obese nation. Self-image is an important part of a person's psyche, and it is also a tool used to sell products. If a company that makes denim wants you to buy their jeans, they will start an advertising campaign that shows a pair of their jeans on a model, perhaps in an exotic environment. The company wants to show us how well we could see each other if we wore their jeans (and lost weight to match the model's body type). When consumers are bombarded by advertising of this nature, our self-image takes a hit. In response to this, we feel "one step below the rest." Over time, this can lead to mild depression, which is easily suppressed when eating food.

Once we become obese, it opens the door to diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, heartburn, infertility and menstrual irregularities and osteoarthritis. It is imperative that we maintain the mental presence to combat these diseases by preventing them through proper diet and exercise.

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