Project 1
Obesity
Isaiah Warren
Composition 2
Professor Hammett
Spring 2026
Word Count-1117
The Path To A Healthy America
Obesity is no longer a small issue that affects a small group of people in America. It has become a national epidemic and affects millions of Americans every day. Obesity is having excess fat on the body, which results in numerous health problems. An adult is classified as obese when they reach a BMI (Body Mass Index) of over 30. This scale varies depending on the person's height, weight, and age. In the last three decades, obesity rates in America have increased dramatically, which has also increased certain other symptoms like diabetes, heart disease, and an overall shorter life span (CDC, 2025). Americans aren’t getting bigger on purpose; it's a systematic process, meant to keep you fat, and it catches many Americans by surprise. Obesity in America can be solved by positive social influence, a healthy environment, and better education on nutrition and obesity prevention.
Social Influence contributes heavily to the obesity epidemic in America, but promoting healthier lifestyles can change social attitudes and behaviors. Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, and sadly, this often gets ignored by most Americans. Some ways to encourage Americans to live a healthier lifestyle would be to encourage group fitness classes, join a sports program, and make physical fitness more socially appealing. Most Americans live a sedentary lifestyle; in fact, 86% of American workers sit at a desk for 8-10 hours every day (Olson, 2026). There are constantly positive and negative influences on health in American society. Fitness influencers encourage Americans in a positive way to take action in their health and fitness. Most food companies are negative influences on Americans because they promote cheap deals on food items that are very unhealthy for the consumer. Since most Americans also live a busy lifestyle, they often resort to unhealthy food choices, which results in some American families getting fast food dinners, which can be very unhealthy if it is not in moderation. This could be fixed by modeling healthy behaviors like cooking meals together as a family, and that’ll limit screen time as well. Fast food is a problem in America. Fast food has become very normalized by society, especially in American culture. Americans are hooked on fast food for three main reasons. It's affordable, it’s convenient, and it's yummy. Fast food is cheap, and it has to be if you want consumers to come back to the product. This has a negative side effect on the quality of the food being served. Most fast food restaurants have what's called ultra-processed foods, which include ingredients such as fats, sugars, and sodium. (What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?) Consumers are brought back to ultra-processed foods because they stimulate the brain's reward system, causing the consumer to come back to these foods (What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?). Americans are a product of the environment around them, and it shows, but when Americans start to model positive examples, it will help reduce the obesity rate.
The environment where you work and live also affects an individual's overall health and weight. A healthier environment can change and help create healthier lifestyles for millions of Americans. Americans could greatly benefit from meal prepping and buying all the food they need at the beginning of the work week, and having packed meals will eliminate the distraction that fast food has on the brain. Major fast food companies are constantly expanding and growing their businesses, and at the same time, most Americans' belts are expanding too. “In America, there are 210,000 fast food restaurants” (Team, 2026). This is a problem because if Americans live five minutes away from a McDonald's or a Taco Bell, it makes it very convenient for them to stimulate their reward system and feed themselves unhealthy food. It’s the same with grocery shopping. Grocery stores will place the most visually appealing processed foods right at the front of the store so that the consumer is more likely to buy that food and start a cycle of buying unhealthy foods. The opposition to the argument is that the individual is solely responsible for their own obesity. This argument isn’t entirely true; this epidemic has a lot less to do with discipline and much more to do with an individual's environment. Certain people are located in food deserts, which are areas that have a lack of nutritious foods (Lee et al., 2019). Food deserts have been directly linked with obesity and have shown that those places are 30% higher obesity rates (Lee et al., 2019). Transportation also plays a role in high obesity rates because rural places, certain places like the South, are heavily dependent on cars for transportation, and overall, this leads to less physical activity. To combat these issues, studies show that having better access to food and more access to recreational facilities and sidewalks reduces the likelihood of obesity. (Lee et al., 2019)
Poor Education plays a significant role in the obesity epidemic in the United States. Education on obesity prevention should be held to a higher standard across the nation and should be enforced by the school system. Many Americans were never properly taught how to live a healthy lifestyle and maintain proper nutrition. Looking into the statistics, it is clear why this is happening. Across the United States, health education is different from state to state. A study was done to see how education on obesity prevention and diabetes varied across the different states. The study revealed that certain places like Arkansas pushed for obesity prevention eduction 95% across the state, Arizona only pushed that same education 42% (Profiles Explorer, 2025). The question to ask is now is, what should the standard for obesity prevention education look like? This is how to combat the issue. Make an obesity prevention and a healthy lifestyle required course that starts in middle school to ensure that they at least have the proper education on what a healthy diet looks like, the effects of fast food on health, and how maintaining proper exercise leads to a fulfilling, healthy life.
Obesity in America is a serious epidemic due to unhealthy environments, negative social influence, and a lack of education. At the end of the day, an obese individual has the choice to make their health a priority or to dismiss it. Ultimately, America has become a place where the repeated patterns show that people are shaped by the environment, but when communities gather together to stop normalizing fast food consumption, start encouraging physical activity and healthy eating habits, and start to properly teach about the detrimental effects of fast food and ultra-processed foods on an individual's health, Americans can put a significantly reduce the damage of the obesity epidemic.
References
CDC. (2025, March 25). Adult Obesity Facts. Obesity. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult-obesity-facts/index.html
Lee, A., Cardel, M., & Donahoo, W. T. (2019, October 12). Social and Environmental Factors Influencing Obesity. Nih.gov; MDText.com, Inc. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK278977/
Olson, L. (2026). Sitting Disease: The Slow, Silent and Sedentary Killer of the American Workforce. US News & World Report; U.S. News & World Report. https://careers.usnews.com/advice/outside-voices-careers/2013/08/22/are-you-suffering-from-sitting-disease
Profiles Explorer. (2025). Cdc.gov. https://profiles-explorer.cdc.gov/#/table/?questionId=SN89&LocationAbbr=ALL&subQuestionId=T_Q6_3_SN89&year=2024
Team, T. R. (2026, January 2). Number of Fast Food Restaurants in America Statistics – U.S. & Industry Data. Restroworks Blog. https://www.restroworks.com/blog/number-of-fast-food-restaurants-in-america-statistics/
What Are Ultra-Processed Foods? | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (2025, November 10). Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/what-are-ultra-processed-foods#:~:text=Ultra%2Dprocessed%20foods%20typically%20contain,but%20that's%20not%20the%20case.%E2%80%9D