Why Do Fast Food Companies Cause Obesity?

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In 1970, an average household would spend around twenty-five percent of their food expenditures on fast food and that number has increased to fifty-three percent since then (Rosenhack 535). Fast food chains have grown rapidly across the United States within the past twenty years, but that is not the only thing that has been on the rise recently. Obesity in America is trending upward due to a variety of contributing factors. People are eating unhealthy foods more often, exercising less, and have stopped caring about their personal health. Ever since the introduction of fast food restaurants, Americans have been obsessed with the idea. Some readers may challenge the idea that fast food is not the leading cause for obesity because they feel that …show more content…
One of the biggest reasons the companies can get away with these schemes is because the calorie information is not on the packaging the food comes in. The customer must visit the website to find this information. The fast food companies know that their customers are less likely to be concerned with the nutritional value of the food if the information is not located right in front of them. Even then, the information the company provides on the website is confusing and misleading (Zinczenko 463). Companies will list the caloric information on their websites, but will list some items separately. For example, they will list the calories for a salad, but will list separately the calories for the croutons, bacon bits, and salad dressing (Zinczenko 464). The customers only see the calories for the salad and decide that it is a healthy choice when it has more calories to consider. This is also the same concept if a customer orders a combo meal. To get the full caloric value, they would need to add up the calories in each item to figure out the meals entire value. Fast food companies also mislead their customers by making their meals more than one serving size. The customer consumes the entire meal thinking they ate one serving, but really, they ate more. Many customers would have limited themselves to the amount of food they had eaten if …show more content…
People see the higher priced foods at the grocery store and are unwilling to pay for them because they cannot justify spending that much money on some strawberries. They fail to recognize the nutritional value that comes with the healthier food items. People know how much a certain meal at a restaurant costs and so they compare it to the amount it would cost them to make it at home and decide on the cheaper fast food option. The reason that fast food is cheaper is because they use cheap, unhealthy ingredients to make the food. People would rather eat the processed, cheap food from a restaurant than pay a little more for a healthy, well-balances meal (Ernest 41). Not only is healthy foods more expensive, but there are less places to purchase them. Fast food chains are everywhere; you cannot drive five miles down the road before running into three or four restaurants. Yet, how many health food stores are located nearby? The local markets are geared towards fast food businesses. Cities are always building new restaurants, but rarely build new grocery stores. Fast food has taken over the food industry and has blinded the American population to where they only think about fast and cheap food options (Zinczenko
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