The ever incrementing rate of obesity in the nations all around the world is starting to become a grave problem and it seems that the adolescents in our society are becoming more overweight by the second. Obesity itself may just be regarded as only a minor imperfection of one’s appearance. However, obesity isn't just a cosmetic concern. It increases your risk of diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Furthermore when you're obese, your overall quality of life may be diminished. You may not be able to do things you used to do, such as participating in enjoyable activities and may even encounter discrimination. All of this will add up to depression and low self esteem. Despite this what is the reason behind the abundance of the overweight among the youth? And should there be a government level intervention?

 

The diet of adolescents has gone through massive alteration in such a short period. Few decades ago, most of people usually ate rice and side dishes, these days the younger generation craves for faster and tastier treats. To satisfy this need, fast food consumption and production skyrocketed though out the last few years. Fast food can usually be served in less than five minutes and the technology related to faster serving has become highly developed and ubiquitous in most fast food stores. (As seen in the photo below)

 

[Photo courtesy, my mother]

Through a thorough investigation of a fast food restaurant it took 2minutes and 17 seconds for my meal to be served. Of course the serving time may differ but it seems that the waiting will not last longer than 5 minutes according to experience.

For busy students and workers who need to save every second of their lives for whatever reason, fast food is the most practical because of the cheap price and fast serving.

As seen above obesity has no sign of waning. But the matter of debate is whether the problem is serious enough for actual intervention from the authorities. First of all, let us go into the feasibility of the government even intervening at all. Usually the government is not allowed to limit or infringe the freedom of a certain individual, without a significant cause. Consuming fast food itself is a freedom of choice for any individual and the government has no right whatsoever to ban this. As a result an absolute ban would not be a viable option, no matter how much it would benefit the society. Rather than an infeasible total ban, there could be policies to reduce the cost of healthier food, carrying out campaigns to involve people reducing junk food intake and to increase physical education classes at school to increase activity levels. If none of these prospective alternatives work. We could consider applying sin tax to junk food. This is basically where the government levies high tax on extremely harmful activities such as alcohol and smoking. The result of this would be high priced fast food just like the case for cigarettes. The morality of this action is another topic of debate as there are still lots of people disagreeing with sin tax. Of course, obesity is junk food is not the only cause of obesity. There are causes such as sedentary lifestyles, but, the harmful food consumption seems to be the main reason for this problem as seen as the most urgent problem at hand.

If powerful action isn’t taken now, junk food will forever haunt us and so will obesity.

 

 

 

Andrew Sung

8th grade

Yeouksam middle school