Obesity in USA: High Rates Among Youth Requiring Urgent Attention - Essay Sample

Introduction

Center for Disease Control's statistics on the state of obesity in the United States of America implies that currently, among the situation requires full medical attention and concern. Obesity is a health issue that is associated with chunk foods. A high deposition of body fats characterizes the condition. It is due to rapid obesity cases amongst the young generation in various states in the United States of America, resulting in other cases of arthritis (Crowson, Matteson, Davis, & Gabriel, 2013). The situation is mostly attributed to eating habit cultures and types of food these generations rely on frequently. Therefore obesity campaigns to ensure public awareness and education on proper eating habits and negative implications of consuming obesity causing food is significantly essential. Some of the food highlighted by the control bodies and health care facilities are the fast foods which are mainly consisting of chunk foods. Eating cultures of most of the United States of America's young and youthful generations have gradually changed over time to the current states where they consume these fast foods at an alarming rate. The paper focuses on the driving factors that resulted in the formation of obesity campaign in the US and how it reflects on the country's nutritional culture.

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History of the Issue

Obesity as a health complication and a current health issue in the United States of America has historical facts that are strictly related and associated with the consumption of oily and fatty and juicy sugary food substances (Dunn, Sharkey, & Horel, 2012). The latter pathological disease is approximately a century old in the USA, taking the reference point on the first instance discovered in the mid-19th century. All along, there had been outspread connotations across all populations that being fat is good. The speculations emerged from the historical situations of limited nutritional content due to lack of food and starvation (Kanciruk, Andrews, & Donnon, 2014). Later in the century, the fat situation began to haunt the victims resulting in stigmatizations and silent sufferings. The conditions countered the massive artistic, medical opinions, and literature mentalities of those times. Health facilities listed this chronic disease as a live-threatening factor due to increased mortality cases related to "chronic nephritis." Subsequently, other conditions were caused by obesity. They include hypertension, heart diseases, and diabetes.

Importance of This Campaign

The main essence of this obesity campaign is to sensitize the population on the issues related to this complex health issue. Some of the issues highlighted for the activity are the causes of the situation, signs and symptoms, health care prevention mechanisms, vulnerable groups, and socio-economic implications (Puhl, & Heuer, 2010). Moreover, the campaign also covers the reflection of the nutritional culture of the citizens of the US, which is accelerating the spread of the disease. Public awareness of health issues and potential factors that causes deterioration in their health status is essential. It ensures that such health issues are suppressed to the lowest limits possible, which favor quality and healthy ways of living. Therefore, the primary importance of this campaign is to bring on board all the susceptible parties and ensure collective decisions on the possible remedies (Kumanyika et al., 2012). All the people are victims of obesity either directly or indirectly; hence sensitization of the issue is essential in combating this chronic health disease.

The reflection of the campaign to the culture of the United States of America, which is the chosen country, implies large populations of the country have inferior dietary cultures. It is because the statistical feedback from the relevant authorities likes the Center for Disease Control is quite shocking. Therefore the results culminate a situation or a culture where citizens majorly depend on fast foods with less on no knowledge on the risks they are exposing themselves to after consumption. Obesity has threatened lives globally with the increasing cases of reported incidences and prevalence (Morland & Evenson, 2009). It has led to increased medical costs with relatively poor outcomes in most of the health facilities taking care of such an epidemic. Research has placed a close association between the rising cases of obesity and the lifestyle aspects in the United States of America (Puhl, & Heuer, 2010). The current culture, characterized by a strong wave where restaurants and hotels are shifting to fast foods, has been marked as significant obesity contributing factor.

Government Cheese

There have been enormous scholarly interests in the rapidly increasing cases of obesity in the past two decades, as opined by Correll (2010). The iconic cultural food enjoyment day where the United States of America offers free government food to American Indians has been attributed to the increasing cases of obese conditions amongst parties involved. Us government's Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) which is a culture which recognizes the American Indians and categorizes them as a common group has been on the spotlight from scholar and professionals. It is because the celebrations involve high consumption of government donated foods that are highly rich in fats. The "commods" as referred to by the American Indians to mean the government food has branded it well with the health implications. The food is processed from agricultural products that highly rich in fats and sugary juices (Murrock & Gary, 2010). The government has been putting efforts to ensure that it refined and process these types of food to extract the stored fats. Scholars have joint hands also to investigate the percentages of fatty matter in such food causing frequent cases of obesity in the US.

Campaigns enable widespread of the intended ideas across the target population audience. It enhances ethnoecological public awareness concerning current and trending issues. Through these public awareness approaches, there is a high degree of audience perception and understanding of the facts related to obesity. The primary target groups are the consumers of the free "commod" bods given by the government free. They are the primary sources of obese conditions amongst the American Indians (Murrock & Gary, 2010). They are the primary consumers of such types of food since they were given during agricultural transitions, which saw them adopt new and modern agricultural strategies. The effectiveness of the campaign is noticed based on the reaction of people when such fast food substances are availed again to American Indians. The responses of the campaigns come in different doses, which includes ridicule and other rejection tools. "The most commonly ridiculed are powdered egg mix, canned meats, corn syrup, and prunes. It is prevalent to hear Indians joking about the palatability of these items-a serious issue" (Morland & Evenson, 2009).

Obesity Campaign Tools

As a result of high populations and diversity in demographic indices of the target groups in the United States of America, the application of various campaign tools in passing the information is vital for efficiency and effectiveness. There are multiple approaches used to sensitize the public on the issues and implications related to obesity. Such tools play an important role in campaigns as they address the problems in a realistic and actualized manner where the public view them as real problems. They display strong messages which oblige the targeted group to either seek medical attention if already victims or look for the preventive measure if they are the vulnerable groups. These approaches includes imagery, messaging, and specific language.

Use of Imagery in Obesity Campaigns

Imagery as a campaign tool remains one of the most influential and most effective approaches to passing intended information or message to target groups. It is an approach that displays the situations and conditions the way they are in graphics forms hence making the public have inner thoughts about the conditions. The majority of the United States of America's citizens respond to graphics much more than they respond to other means of campaigns. Obesity has negative emotional impacts in children due to constant embarrassment as a result of big body size (Cornette, 2011). Graphic images give strong and influential impressions due to the visible and physical side effects on the images used during the campaigns. People tend to disassociate with such pictures by trying to keep up with preventive measures rather than waiting for treatments (PerezEscamilla, Lutter, RabadanDiehl, Rubinstein, Calvillo, Corvala, & EwartPierce, 2017). When the target groups see an ugly image associated with obesity like in Figure 1. Below, they are formed mainly by the psychological urge to work on their current situations and prevent the conditions. In the process, the campaign message is quickly passed. The imagery approach is mainly conducted along the main streets of the US cities and busy public facilities where coverage is relatively high. Some of the effects of fast foods used in campaign images are elephant-body condition, yellowish eye colors, and skin color changes (Currie, DellaVigna, Moretti, & Pathania, 2010).

Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1: Scary face associated with Obesity Conditions (Dunn, Sharkey, & Horel, 2012)

Use of Messaging in Obesity Campaigns

Proper use of messaging approaches in obesity campaigns is also equally effective as other methods. Messaging involves the use of short information in a "message environment." Message environment, in this case, implies platforms like social media sites where the campaign teams can send some informational messages there for the subscribers to access (Brewis, 2010). The messaging environment can be YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, hangouts, Pinterest, and Instagram pages. The majority of the United States of America's citizens are social media subscribers. Therefore, they have higher chances of accessing social media information than analog data displayed off in social media sites on the global impacts of obesity (Malik, Willett, & Hu, 2013). Below is an informative campaign message on world obesity day, which is highly accessible to US citizens through online pages.

Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2: Message on World Obesity Day Campaign

Health statistics indicate that the use of messages has impacted positively on the issues of obesity campaigns. It is because the health care facilities questionnaires on patients requiring them to disclose where they found the campaign information, the majority reveals that they acquire the knowledge from online messaging tools. Therefore it shows that the majority of the United States of America's citizens are implementing the online messaging requests to check on their health status and, in particular, obesity-related challenges. Hepatocellular adenomas, which is an obesity-related health care issues, has been reduced. Also, its impacts on people have subsequently subsided as a result of online messaging techniques, which the anti-obesity campaign brigade sends to various online platforms where citizens access (Bunchorntavakul, Bahirwani, Drazek, Soulen, Siegel, Furth, & Reddy, 2011).

Obesity Campaign Language

The United States of America has different types of people from various localities, hence diverse cultures, languages, lifestyles, and general ways of living. As a result of this acute diversity, there is a mandatory formulation of a harmonized campaign language by the campaign brigade to cover and favors all the parties targeted. A harmonized campaign language is essential in passin...