The Business Case for Healthier Food Options - Essay Example

She reveals o businesses that have taken the lead in augmenting the move to healthy food provision, she states, “great American companies are achieving greater and greater success by creating and selling healthy products” (Obama, 115).   The reason she advocates for businesses to join the fight against obesity is that they are part of the cause through providing unhealthy food to the public, advertising junk foods to children, and lack of labeling products for health standards. A number of reasons for businesses to invest in healthy foods in the article include building relations and stronger connections with customers and communities respectively, as demonstrated by Wal-Mart. Disney, Walgreens, and other restaurants have made changes towards healthy foods by reducing sodium, eliminating junk foods, and putting on fat and calorie content. The fact that businesses will stand to benefit from this arrangement is the reasoning behind the call for them to invest and expand the provision o healthy food to meet the cause of their bottom-line while increasing the health standards in America and consequently reducing obesity rates.
            The other reason is the need to reduce obesity and health-related illnesses whose costs are also borne by businesses indirectly through lower productivity, absenteeism, and directly through payment of hospitalization bills. The other reason behind the call for businesses to venture into the healthy food business is the costs they have to bear from the impacts of obesity and health-related illnesses. The result of measures to promote healthy living by different people in society is a 13% reduction in obesity rates of elementary school-aged kids in Mississippi, a fall in obesity rates in New York, Philadelphia, and California. However, the goal is far from accomplished, and businesses are challenged to give “American families better information and healthier choices”.
            Obesity is a universal theme, Dhruv Khullar writes on the availability of junk foods cheaply than healthy foods and measures to reverse the trend in “Why Shame won’t stop obesity”. Khullar (2012) explores the high availability of “high-fat, high-calorie, and low nutrient foods”, as the main causes of increased obesity and associated diseases in America. He delves into the issue of obesity advertising and shaming and believes in the need to refrain from shaming children and parents since it is not an effective strategy owing to low options for augmenting healthy eating habits. He recommends the provision of monetary incentives for producing healthy food, minimizing junk food advertising since it is one o the main causes of obesity in children, and “educating and empowering youth to make informed decisions” (Kullar, 2012). These two tests were written as a measure of reducing obesity levels in America owing to the high rates of obesity and related diseases in the United States.