Obesity

1.

A popular research has shown that a child’s healthy choice of meal, or the content of a lunchbox brought to school can be the subject for bullying. In the eyes of a child, a healthy meal is considered “upper class” and girlish, because of the influence from the media, which creates an attitude where what you eat reflects your gender, and also your social class. It is getting more common for a lunchbox to contain high-fat and high-sugar meals, with sweets and sugary drinks. Therefore, a homemade meal might be considered low-class and. As a result of this, more children might want to follow the peer pressure, and eat the unhealthy food, which in the last end leads to obesity. Therefore, Barnardo’s wants to reduce the amount of sugary drinks and fast food sold by vending machines in England, just as in Scotland and Wales.

2.

The four articles bring four different approaches to the issue of obesity, and how it has escalated to the current level. The First article is dealing with the fact that immigrants in USA are more exposed and vulnerable to the epidemic of obese, as they often are of Low-income families, and therefore are likely to live in bad neighbourhoods with few options of exercise. As immigrants try to get socialized in the American community, they start picking up bad habits as they want to be American, with the advantages of an American, which includes the bad food. Furthermore, an easy way of getting socialized is watching TV, which is worsening the condition while people get inactive.

The second article is based upon a research, which has shown that teenage girls that diet are possible to be a part of the obesity later in their life as adults. This early diet is accused for altering the female metabolic state of the teen girl, which might lead to obesity. As the “ideal” of the female body already is getting disturbed by the Medias, a lot of young girls diet to live up to the demands. So in fact, some people that do want to lose weight are unable to do it. The idea of the dieting leading to weight gain is also touched, and it makes sense. The restrictions of calories may lead to a more efficient metabolism, and therefore reverses the wanted effect of weight loss, into weight gain. The two last articles link the growing influence of the Medias on the children with the rising issue of obesity. When they advertise for unhealthy food, and at the same time attach the small ones to the TV screens, the kids are raised with these bad habits for the rest of their lives.