The Impacts of Fast Foods on Obesity and Weight of College Students - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages... These types of foods have been strongly criticized particularly due to issues of health. Many studies have, in fact, attributed the high level of overweight and obesity to these foods. This paper intends to look into the impact of fast foods on obesity and overweight because these are health concerns that have originated very many diseases nowadays. Obesity is a medical condition whereby the body of an individual contains very high level of body fats to a level of occasioning adverse health impacts. When the body mass index (BMI) is greater than 30 kg/m2, a person is said to be suffering from obesity. Such a person is highly susceptible to diseases such as type II diabetes, heart diseases, osteoarthritis and certain types of cancers, among many others (Haslam and James, 2005).
The fast spread of fast foods in restaurants has generated a lot of debate especially regarding the impact of such foods on the health of people. In fact, many nutritionists and health professionals have cautioned their clients against overconsumption of such foods as they claim their health risk can be massive (Abdollah, 2007; Mcbride, 2008; Mair et al. 2005). However, it is notable that the evidence that links fast food to obesity and gain in weight is not very convincing. Most of those who claim that it fast foods is responsible for obesity have conducted their research on very small samples hence narrowing the validity of their generalization.
A recent study by Rosenheck (2008), on the relationship between fast foods and obesity, it was found that the results from observational studies have not been able to establish a link between obesity and fast foods. A couple of recent studies have paid attention to fast foods restaurant as possible contribute avenues of gaining weight (Philipson and Posner, 2008). Anderson and Matsa (2009) concentrate on the connection between obesity and feeding habits, whereby the related the presence of many restaurants around the highway in a rural area and the eating habits. However, they found no credible link between obesity and restaurants.   ...Download file to see next pagesRead More