Obesity in America

Essay by bukaka19College, UndergraduateB+, February 2009

download word file, 3 pages 3.0

One of the largest health care issues in the United States is obesity. According to the National Center for Health and Statistics it is the number one healthcare issue among children. Over the past 20 years the amount of overweight Americans has increase by over 15 %. In 2007 over 30 % of Americans are considered to be either over weight or obese. That is about one hundred million people in the US.

Obesity is the leading contributor of many serious health care issues such as hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Coronary Heart disease, Stroke, Gall bladder disease, and sleep apnea. Obesity counts for about a tenth or 95$ billion of the nations health care costs, much of which is paid by tax dollars. These associatedhealth problems place a significant economic impact on health care systems because of loss of resources, and increase in health insurance premiums, because much of the nations obesity can be avoided.

Obesity kills an average of 400,000 Americans each year. Ironically According to the World Health Organization obesity is the number one preventable cause of death. Every year American's spend more than 35$ billion in exercise equipment (usually collecting dust in corners) and related services yet each year nationwide obesity continues to increase by an average of 3% so obviously there is something is obviously still not working. There are not enough programs available to provide healthy food and teach the importance and strategies for living at a healthy weight.

While many promising efforts are being initiated across the country, there is no national commitment to addressing the problem. I'm here to talk about an effective strategy originally introduced by the World Health Organization in 1994 to reduce obesity. The World Health Organization has proposed an introduction of a fat tax on unhealthy...