Band 8+: Today more people are overweight than ever before. What in your opinion are the primary causes of this? What are the main effects of this epidemic?

Nowadays the number of overweight people is constantly increasing. This essay will discuss the main reasons of this epidemic and then describe the possible effects of the problem. In my opinion, the foremost causes of obesity are inactive lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Today more and more people rely on cars instead of walking, have less physical demands at work and prefer inactive leisure activities. This results in burning less calories and gaining weight. Moreover, the problem is accentuated by the growing number of people, who eat irregularly and consume large portions of high-calorie food. For example, about 50% of the adult population in Europe with so-called disordered eating suffer from obesity. The possible effects of this problem include physical health problems and loss of productivity. First of all, obesity results in incorrect functioning of the human body and contributes to the risk of developing some chronic illnesses. For example, as body fat percentage increases, the person’s metabolism worsens, which in turn may result in diabetes or heart diseases. Secondly, overweight people are very unhealthy and often suffer from stress and tiredness. This lessens their work capacity and results in lower productivity. For example, it has been proven that an obese person needs to put more effort to complete some task than a person with normal weight. To sum up, obesity is a big problem that affects a lot of people nowadays. It’s mainly caused by inactive lifestyle and eating disorders and results in severe health problems and loss of productivity.