Introduction
People do graduate from being overweight to obese. Clinically, someone who is overweight is regarded as anyone who has a body weight that is 20 per cent greater than the recommended height. Such people have excessive fat in their systems. Thus, they are at a higher risk of contracting illnesses that are linked to such conditions. They range from diabetes to heart diseases such as thrombosis. Body Mass Index (BMI) which involves comparison of weight and height is normally used to determine if somebody is suffering from obesity or not. Overweight people have a BMI range of 25-30 kg/sq meter, where as people suffering from obesity have BMI that is above 30 kg/sq meters. People suffering from obesity tend to have reduced life expectancy. This study will review the works of James E. Tillotson and report by Clara Pirani on obesity and critique some of the issues they have highlighted.
Tillotson’s article generally relates problems associated with obesity to food industries concerted effort to manufacture and advertise goods that accelerate obesity in both children and adults.
Summary of Tillotson article
Tillotson purports that according to Rand Corporation Study on population 90 million Americans have been classified as overweight. He links this precedence to strain on medical care. He further states that costs associated with obesity at that time were far more compared to the health costs due to smoking. Tillotson reports that The Rand’s population research indicated that between the year 1991 and the year 2000, sixty per cent of Americans were classified as overweight. Tillotson attributes the rising cases of obesity to food industries that supply cheap, tasty and starchy food. He recommends that such food industries should aim at serving people with foods that will not jeopardize their health by encouraging overfeeding. Tillotson posits that people’s obsession with food is not absolutely industry related as individual’s input also encourages this. The food industries indeed encourage people to eat more by enhancing the taste of food, making the foods more accessible, offering affordable prices and marketing their products by using advertisements and promotions that are extremely enticing. However, the desire for food is psychological and it is only individuals who can control it. He reiterates that obesity can only be controlled by eating less. He reckons that some measures to control obesity like labeling and dissemination of nutritional advice have not worked. He attributes the failures to efficacy of the strategies that food industries use in marketing their products. Tillotson blames resurgence of obesity on authorities haze in coming up with solutions that are not comprehensive like imposition of sin food taxes, and restriction of food advertisement. This study also blames rising cases of obesity on complacency of the law as it gives a soft landing for commercial speech advertising. Tillotson attributes rising cases of obesity in American population to sedentary lifestyles and unavailability of motivated behavior pattern. Apart from behavior pattern and overeating, lack of physical exercise is also considered as a cause of obesity.
Critique of Tillotson’s work
Tillotson did not specify on how he arrived at the 90 million mark of the young and adults that were suffering from obesity. Proposition that food industry should restrict sale of certain foods is not practical in a free market that embraces market forces. This is because no one can restrict somebody to purchase food if he/she has the purchasing power (money). In addition, such companies cannot embrace such a policy because they would be limiting their sales and thus, reducing their revenues. This proposal can only be actualized when the market is regulated. On labeling and giving nutritional advice, he does not divulge information on how food industries have frustrated these efforts. Tillotson terms government intervention to control obesity as quick fix, but does not elaborate why he refers to some of these strategies as quick fix solutions because I personally feel that tax slap on certain foods that promote obesity can help in mitigation of this menace.
Pirani’s article talks about food situation and obesity in Australia.
Summary of Pirani’s article
Pirana posits that a mere mention of a phrase ‘eating disorder’ makes people to think of anorexia or bulimia. Australia is presented as a model country, where people never eat because they are hungry hence the occurrence of many health complications. Pirana asserts that 60 % of adults in Australia are overweight and 21 per cent obese. Measures meant to control cases of obesity like labeling some food as junk or bad are said to have failed to achieve their objectives. programs intended to educate people on what they eat and how much they should weigh are said to be based on premise that the overweight lack knowledge on foods that encourage obesity like meat pies, chips and doughnuts. Dieting which has much to do with checking the percentages of carbohydrates, proteins, and sugar intake and minimal vegetables and fruit rations requires that one spends a lot of time determining what they ought to take. Taylor in Pirans’s report feels that the best way to overcome problems of overweight is to think naturally about food. She decries dieting because she feels it denies people choices to exhaust. McFadden feels that dieting is not the way to go and proposes that people are supposed to have a normal relationship with food. She takes normal to mean that one should eat when he or she feels hungry, stopping to eat only when you feel you are full, keeping at bay any form of guilt.
Critique of Pirani’s work
A generalization that some people may be taking food that encourages obesity without knowing according to my perception is wrong because some of these people are aware of the consequences of over consuming such foods but just choose to ignore. Some people do the dieting or engage in weight loss measures without proper insight into the issue and therefore do not follow the diet properly. On the idea that people should eat and only stop when they are full, I feel that eating and stopping only when you feel full will not help in weeding out overweight but will instead encourage it as this will result into overeating.
Conclusion
A major step that can be used towards the control of the high cases of obesity and overweight is a campaign of a change of people’s behavior.The government can establish very strict regulatory measures to food manufacturing industries and even tax victims of obesity, but without behavior change very little can be achieved.
Reference list
Pirani, C, “Why you can’t stop overeating: Australia’s most common eating disorder I rarely diagnosed, despite being a major cause of obesity”, The Weekend Australia, 2003, pp. 34-37.
Tillotson, JE, “We are fatter and getting fatter! What is the food industry’s role?” Nutrition today, Wolters Kluwer, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins publishers, 2002, pp. 92-138.