With a skyrocketing rate of obesity around the globe, some are of the opinion have advocated for a measure that increasing the cost of fast food could potentially reduce the obesity rate. Personally, my opinion expresses a partly support with this suggestion based on some rationales that are going to be explored in-depth in this essay.
On the one hand, there are some reasons that explain why having the price of fast food escalated could alleviate the obesity rate in a deliberate manner. At present, with the affordability and accessibility of fast food as well as it only requires simple ways of cooking with less ingredients, customers can easily self-cook or ubiquitously purchase it without any attempt. Also, fast food is in group of ultra-processed foods, which is designed to be attractive to many customers. Unfortunately, it often contains high caloric content, which leads to unnecessary accumulation of energy and eventually obesity. Thus, if we curb its demand by raising the price of fast food, the rate of obesity could significantly decrease as customers would shift to other healthier food options.
On the other hand, although the idealistic nature of such a proposal, increasing the cost of fat food may have complex implications which leads to ineffective outcomes. When it comes to a terminology “food fast”, it is considered an intangible definition due to the fact that people cannot exactly determine whether their food is fast food or not. As a result, it is extremely challenging when enforcing regulations to increase the price of fast food. Instead, there is an optimal measure that focusing on the elements hiding behind the high caloric value which directly causes obesity. For example, the government could increase the price of sugar, which is overused as an inevitable approach in many countries, to reduce the obesity rate.
In conclusion, although there are mixed opinions on determining whether surging the price of fast food could potentially cut down on the rate of obesity. While I believe that an increase in the price of fast food could dramatically reduce the obesity rate, yet, its implementation would be sophisticated and could lead to ineffective results, I suppose that paying attention to boosting the price of sugar could yield the best outcomes in a drop of obesity rate.