When I first commenced secondary school only 1 pupil in my class was overweight. Now 20 years later more than half of my daughter’s classmates are either overweight or obese. In the following paragraphs I will outline what I believe are some of the major root causes and I will also suggest some pragmatic solutions.
Walk into an grocery store or mall and one will see nothing but candies, processed foods and fast food outlets in all four directions. It is no wonder then that so many people consume way too much sugar and unhealthy foods on a daily basic. In fact it is now a sad reality that the average person consumes sweets and other processed foods as part of their staple diet. According to a pletora of research the consumption of excess sugar and fast foods leads to all types of issues no more so than the gaining of body weight. These types of foods are not natural to our digestive system and so the body tries its best to store them as fat. One practical solution that could be implemented quite easily is for the government to put tariffs and other taxes on foods that are not benefical to our health and to give incentives to purchase foods that are healthier. This could go along to helping reduce the massive health crisis of obesity. However alone this may not be enough.
To truly try and tackle this health issue we need to relook at our lifestyle and daily habits too. Most people now live a sedentary lifestyle were they commute to work by bus or car, they sit in the office for 8 hours and then commute home only to sit and watch TV or scroll through their phone. Clearly being inactive is only going to lead to people gaining pounds as the simple fact is that if you consume more energy (in the form of food calories) than you burn off then you will inevitably gain unwanted kilos. A potential answer is to encourage people to undertake more physical activities such as walking and gym going. This could assist in alievating the global pandemic.
To recapitulate, evidently there are some core causes to the health and social issue facing the world, namely consumption of junk foods and sweets as well as living an inactive life. The solutions to remedy this are going back to a more natural way of eating and being more mobile.