Poverty![]() A major contributor to obesity is poverty. According to Ferdman, “people who grow up poor seem to have a significantly harder time regulating their food intake, even when they aren't hungry." This conclusion comes from Sarah Hill who did a study using people from different economic levels testing how their body regulated food intake. Hill’s study, which Ferdman reported on, found that people who grew up poor were more likely to overeat regardless of their current economic status. The reason that this habit seems to follow people who grew up poor is currently unknown, but the end result is still that these people have a much harder time regulating their food intake. This means that poorer people are stereotypically destined to become overweight or obese.
Americanization Americanization is also a major cause of obesity. Economist and political scientist Ryan McMaken presented census data that showed that first generations immigrants, who were usually poorer than the regular population, did not become obese; they actually usually ended up having a longer lifespan than native Americans. But, he also noticed that by the third generation the descendants of the immigrants had the same health problems and obesity rates as the rest of the Americans. The argument that McMaken came up with from this data is that obesity is due more to these people adapting to America’s culture of oversized portions and love of junk food, also known as Americanization, than to poverty. Obesity impacts the poor at a much bigger rate than the middle class, but this can be because of Americanization. Socioeconomic levels seem to put a person at a bigger risk for the inability to regulate their food intake, but Americanization can also impact a single group more than others.
Overall Cause |
I do think that obesity is related to personal laziness, but I do not think that laziness is the primary cause. Obesity seems to be caused by a variety of things that can best be summed up as the American culture. Unfortunately, in this case, the negative impacts of the American culture are most prevelant in people of lower socioeconomic levels. Healthy food is quite expensive, but junk food is extremely cheap. Junk food, while cheap, is not particularly filling, so it becomes easy to intake too many calories when eating these sugary and salty snack. Plus most impoverished people do not have time to work out because they must work long days at low paying jobs and stress about finding ways to provide for themselves and their families. This stuff combined with the fact that poor people are more likely to overeat means that they are at a much higher risk for obesity. But, the fact the poor immigrants generally do not become obese or overweight until the third generation living in America proves that poverty is a big contributor to obesity, but Americanization is a bigger one and plays a significant role in impovershed people becoming obese as well. Therefore, while things like poverty and laziness are contributors to obesity, the general American culture plays the biggest role in causing obesity.