Introduction
The sight of an obese person has become a common phenomenon to a point where people are a no-longer concern because they perceive it as a normal scenario. Obesity is on the increase among both children and adults.
When visiting the cities, one cannot help to notice that the number of fast food restaurants is on the increase.
Today people consider going out as simply a chance to find food or drinks, thus supposing that eating is a leisure activity. Arguably, the weather is a major determinant of the leisure activity to engage in but negating physical activities for food is of more harm to the body than good.
Obesity is the increase of the body’s weight over the natural limit because of accumulated fats. An obese person has an increase in the body’s weight by over 30% of the ideal weight (Luffiyya et al., 2003). The body accumulates fats because of the increase in the intakes in size or quantity.
According to Luffiyya et al. (2003), the human body contains about 30-35 billion fat cells. Their size increases when the body gains weight.
Continual weight gain means the production of new cells, which makes it hard for the body to get rid of them, which is why the more overweight one is, then the harder for it to lose weight
By Oeffinger et al. on the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2003, “childhood obesity is an important predictor of many adult diseases such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and ultimately, cardiovascular disease.”
Today the modest form of obesity affecting majority is sturdily associable to the common risks or consequences such as coronary heart diseases. The major causes of obesity are amplified by food intake or diminished physical activities.
Obesity is a gradual procedural gain of energy or loss of physical activities. Today people have poor lifestyles and diets and technology enables the food industries to produce foods in high quantities without consideration of quality regarding the measure of fat or oil content.
The demand for processed or fast foods is evident from the numbers of the business industries in operation today.
People are forming bad eating habits in the family setting by buying ready-made foods instead of fruits, vegetables, white grain bread, brown rice, and other unrefined carbohydrates.
One question many people would ask regards the long-run advancements over weight gain.
The argument presented in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (2008), is that technological progress is the main induction of the weight growths because of the inactivity of the home food production of the market products.
The technological advancement has equally caused low food prices because of the genetically modified agricultural innovations. The social setting today in homes and work-settings comprises of the computerized activities that reduce the physical activities.
Obesity is a personal trade-off between the choices about occupation, the activities one engages in during free time, location, lifestyle, and food intake behaviors (Proietto and Bour, 2004).
The technological growth is the main catalyst to progression over economical advancement and arguably the incentive to the food choices that people make today. Statistics indicate that food prices have been on the decrease in the recent past (Phillipson, 2001).
There is also the aspect of job settings. People are today engaged in less strenuous activities due to technological advancement. Similar calories intake but lower work input is a significant cause of the current obese cases.
Considering the earlier agricultural and industrial society, the food was expensive, and the worker had to engage a larger share of the food to replace the lost calories through manual tasks.
The learned unhealthy lifestyles such as poor or lack of physical activities continue to nourish over the years and eventually becomes a problem.
Currently, the technology has made tasks easier such that people need to sit most of the day in the comfort of their homes or workplaces behind a computer and perform the tasks in a relaxed manner.
Children tend to watch television and play computer games with a rare engagement in physical activities. This means that they are never active enough to use the over-gained energy levels and therefore the extra calories are instead stored as fat.
The Video, computers and television games are substituting outdoor activities at an alarming rate. Before the advancement in technology, adequate exercise for the children as well as the parents was the main reason for good health and thus minimized cases of obesity or obese-related illnesses.
Lack of technological indoor games forced the parents to engage in outdoor activities since it was the only available option for guiding children’s growth.
Today spending more time indoors means that people have better and greater right to use the unhealthy bites in the house such as the junk food, which are the root cause of obesity (Philipson, 2001).
Technological advancement has equally made life more challenging and competitive. In most homes, both parents need to work to boost revenue and counter the ever-increasing economic competitiveness.
The rate of divorces also causes the mother to prefer single families; thus the need to find income earning projects or full-time jobs.
The parents leave the children unattended with exposure to video, computer and, television games and unmonitored junk food intake, a thus greater consumption of in excessive quantities of calories and obese cases.
The busy family settings are today engaging in outside catering for all the meals. The breakfast beverage today is the soft drink accompanied by sandwiches or burritos. The takeout foods from fast food restaurants have replaced the home meals.
The enormous economically related pressure on the family setting that is forcing both the mother and father to the workforce is excessively amplifying the use of snack foods and ready to take drinks.
Today the lifestyle no longer involves the situation where the mother prepares meals and waits for the children from school.
Argumentatively, there is no time for long-meals preparations and technology enhances quick developments such as the microwave technology to heat the McDonald’s takeaway foods.
The issue might be time as people claim to have little or less time to prepare proper meals due to other pressing issues but contrary, there is a wide amount of time used in addictive browsing, charting or watching television.
These are equally the key leisure activities that are not assisting in fighting obesity occurrences.
Conclusion
In reality, technology is a cost to the lost creativity and control over the required healthy lifestyle. It is making most people passive while making the acquisition and preparation of unhealthy meals easier or faster. The technology has equally changed on the content that people consume.
The labor involved in the preparations makes people prefer the easy to cook and serve. Television is probably the most consequential part of the technology that is amplifying the obesity epidemic.
The amount of television viewing has highly increased, and the fast food restaurant marketers are taking advantage of the situation. Advertising is highly changing the eating habits and thus the ignorance over long-term effects regarding the decision to change the food choices.
The laissez-fair system supports freedom in the supply of junk food and related advertisements; therefore, the consumer has to make wise decisions over the available choices.
References
Lutfiyya, N et al. (2008). Overweight and Obese Prevalence Rates in African American and Hispanic Children: An Analysis of Data from the 2003–2004 National Survey of Children’s Health. Journal of the American Board of Family medicine. (JABFM). Vol 21(3), Pp 191-199.
Oeffinger, K et al. (2003) Obesity in Adult Survivors of Childhood Acute Lymphoblast Leukemia. Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol 21. Web.
Philipson, T. J. (2001). The World Wide Growth in Obesity: An Economic Research Agenda, Health Economics, v 10, p 1-7.
Proietto, J. & Baur, L. (2004). Management of Obesity. Medical Journal of Australia (MJA). Vol. 180(9). Pp 474-480.