Obesity: Who is Responsible for Our Weight - Essay Example

1. Choose a topic Summarize both the Pro and Con Arguments. Topic - Obesity: Who is responsible for our weight? First Are you responsible for your own weight? Pro The US government has considered obesity as a public health problem and intervened to solve it by reducing and restricting the availability of foods that may lead to obesity and by increasing taxes on fatty foods and spending millions dollars to encourage healthy life style. But this is not the right practice. Government use social money for these programs, thereby it is unfair for healthy non obese individuals.

Government should not consider this as a public health problem and should not take the responsibility of becoming overweight. The responsibility of obesity and any health care cost related to its consequences should be bared by the obese individuals themselves. Second Author: Are you responsible for your own weight? Con The food industry increases their profits by introducing unhealthy foods to the society. Most of the TV food commercials are on fast foods, soft drinks and sugary cereals. They spend millions for advertising and promoting unhealthy food where the government only spend comparatively very small amount for nutrition education programs.

This makes people eat lot of fast food and become obese. Food industry and its supporters argue on three points 1. Obesity is a personal responsibility- this is wrong, because we cannot say people today are less responsible than people in few years back. 2. Food industry supplies on demand but do not create the demand – it ignores the biology 3. Food Restrictions assault freedom- eat more and exercise is a failed attempt Obesity still increase every year, therefore the government should consider this as a public problem and should act to limit eating unhealthy foods by all possible means. 2. Was each author effective in supporting his or her main point? How? First author totally put the responsibility to the consumer.

He is supporting his main point to some extent, but it is not totally effective since he has not clearly showed how personal responsibility solves the problem or how government involvement fails. Second author wants to address this as a public problem and completely ignored personal responsibility. However he tries to supports his point by breaking the justifications given by the food industry. But some are not very clear. 3. What part of each argument was unconvincing? Why? First author does not clearly explain how individual responsibility effectively solves the problem and why public approach fails.

Second author fails to break the second and third points (Food industry supplies on demand but does not create the demand, Food Restrictions assault freedom) strongly. His points are weak and less informative. 4. With which argument do you most close agree? Why? I mostly agree with the first argument that “you are responsible for your own weight”. Because obesity is multifaceted issue, even if unhealthy foods are available someone can control weight by limiting frequency of eating unhealthy food and regular exercises.

Currently healthy foods are also available in the market. Some people consume fast foods because they have no time to prepare healthy foods. Even if unhealthy foods are limited obesity cannot be prevented without individual approach. However public intervention cannot be completely ignored since nutrition education help people change their lifestyle. References 1. Marantz, P.R., Bird, E.D., Alderman, M.H. "A call for higher standards of evidence for dietary guidelines". American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

March 2008. 34 : 234–240.