Global Obesity

Global Obesity

People’s bodies are shaped from the time they are in the womb. The health of the fetus is  directly related to the mother’s health. When mothers eat healthy and their lifestyles are healthy, their children tend to be healthy, too. For example, there are signs that are located ubiquitously in restaurants and food markets that say, “pregnancy and alcohol do not mix.” Mothers are considered indicators for their children’s health. Therefore, it is important that mothers should have enough education that allows them to learn how to prevent obesity. Education also allows mothers to have jobs that provide an income to afford nutritious foods and not high caloric food that leads to obesity.

According to Richardson (2015), “90% of educated women re-invest most of their income into their families, whereas men invest only 30-40% of their income back into the family.” That is to say, women are more likely than men to use their money in maternal ways like education, food and health care.

Education allows women to know more facts about what obesity causes. This is important for practicing healthy lifestyles. However, there are indicators that drive people, especially women to become obese.

One of the most important indicators for obesity is poverty. Many people are living under the poverty line around the world, so they have some difficulties in feeding themselves and their families. Because of the fact that poor people have limited budgets, they are forced to buy from fast food restaurants like McDonald's. For five dollars, people can fill their stomachs with processed high caloric foods that contain too much sodium and other additionally bad ingredients. There were some people that did experiments on McDonald’s burgers and fries. They found shocking results! They found that burgers and fries from McDonald’s do not break down at all, so what does McDonald's food do to our bodies?      

According to Wheeler (2007), she claims that obesity causes and increases the risk of having cardiovascular diseases like stroke, high blood pressure and heart attack, which account for the greatest number of deaths for women and men.

When people are sick, they tend to take some days off and stay in their homes or maybe even have to stay in the hospital. This inevitably leads to lowering their income. In addition, when parents become sick due to poor diets, it affects the ability for children to attend school. Therefore, children have a lack of education that also causes less chances of employment in their future.

A majority of people experience stress, and everybody is differentiated by their level of stress, which in turn can lead to obesity. According to Sapolsky regular exercising is a good way to deal with chronic stress and decreases the chances of lowering their levels of growth hormone (Wheeler, 2007). Exercising does not only help obese people to lose weight, it also helps them to feel the pleasure in what they are doing. There are cells in the brain that are responsible for these feelings of happiness called beta-endorphins. These cells are released in the brain while exercising (Wheeler, 2007).

We see that there are many people especially adolescents who want to lose weight because they are not satisfied with their sizes, or feel ashamed among their friends. Thus, when they feel depressed, they can tend to eat more adding additional high caloric foods to their diet. However, exercising is an intimate way for managing stress and contributes to building a strong self-esteem (Wheeler, 2007).  

Turki Altharman

June 5, 2015

Reference

McGrane, S. (Producer). (2011, November 21). Obesity. YouTube. Podcast retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdcR-ZhuW50

Richardson, D. (2015). Global poverty and health impacts [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://d2l.pdx.edu/d2l/le/content/517705/viewContent/2030896/View

Wheeler, C. M. (2007). 10 Simple Solutions to Stress: How to Tame Tension and Start Enjoying Your Life. New Harbinger Publications.