Research Paper on Obesity: A Global Crisis Affecting Millions of Lives

Introduction

Obesity can be defined as a medical condition that affects someone's health out of the excess body weight or excess fat in the body. People who suffer from obesity have the potential of having different health problems such as strokes and heart diseases. A person can also have high blood pressure and cholesterol levels that are abnormal, which leads to stroke and heart diseases. In the world today, obesity has become a crisis. Over 40 years ago, the people who are affected by obesity were almost triple. Currently, more than 650 million people are suspected to be suffering from obesity worldwide, which is the United States' double population in total (Stein and Coldtz 2004, p. 253). Furthermore, more than 120 million children and young adults are suffering from obesity. Obesity is linked to different political, social, and economic factors that are within the country or in the world. Some of the social determinants include poverty, hereditary genes, and others. The environment and food industry also are some factors that bring out obesity. This global crisis of obesity needs urgent action from the government (Wright and Aronne 2012, p.731). This can be achieved by advocating the different policy actions towards obesity prevention in the guidance of studies that outline various approaches from the government. Therefore, obesity can be caused by social determinants that are related to health and globalization.

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Globalization, the inexorable spread of technology, culture, capital, and knowledge from one nation to another, has forced many good and bad things to the world, especially in the health sector. The good things are that millions of people have been lifted out from poverty, reduction of hunger, and many infectious diseases that are, in turn, it has improved life quality. The ill about globalization is that the same economic and social shifts which have increased wealth to people as well as the expansion of waistlines, which is driving in the epidemic of obesity in India, China, and many other worldwide countries that are developing.

How Globalization Promotes Obesity

The overweight problem is becoming a real burden and struggle in many countries that have low or middle income. On an individual level, energy imbalances result in obesity, where many calories are found in the human body. Besides, physical activities and food choices activities are shaped by the world where these people live. The food environment influences what people eat by determining the available types of food, their cost, and how they are marketed. How the environment is built influences the activeness of people that is the neighborhoods, systems of transport, buildings, and any other human-made element. New technologies are also there to change how people do their work, what they use for transportation, and what they do in their leisure times.

Cheap Food and Global Free Trade

Urbanization, economic growth, and free trade are three global forces that are broad and are likely to affect or alter people's food, new technologies, and the environment built. In the past four decades, the beef price dropped that lead to global trade liberalization in large parts. In the 1970s and 80s, low, middle-class people started trade crops in the country borders (Sallis and Glanz 2009, p.130). Agricultural products were also introduced by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which made the price of food to decrease. With these changes in food prices, there is a link to how much people eat more food, which in turn leads to obesity risk. This is not the only way in which trade liberalization also gives people access to many and different food types, which are likely to have high calories. Foreign investment barriers of food distribution have also been removed, hence allowing expansion of multinational companies of food and chains of fast food to new countries.

Income, Weight and Socio-Economic Status

Globalization has made the world wealthier, and weight is linked to wealth. Since many countries have started moving on the scale of income, there is also a rise in the range of obesity. Poor people and peasants now get enough money to link up themselves with new habits, which are associated with obesity, such as buying more foods that is processed in the supermarkets. These people forget about knowledge of healthy eating, physical activities, health care that would help them to cut down their weight. When middle people also get access to better education and health care, obesity rates begin to fall. Interestingly, well-educated people have a high chance of suffering from obesity than poor people.

Diets and Activities

The world of today is becoming more urban. In today's world, many people live in the cities, while 10 percent of the people live in rural areas. An increase in innovation, urban food, and built-up environments are found in cities, which results in sedentary lifestyles and poor diets. Researches show up that people who are living in traditional villages are likely to be safe because they walk on long distances or do any other physical activity that makes them limit the effect of obesity. Economic growth has also lead to diet shifts that can be predicted. The increase in technology and wealth in the world has increased calories intakes. China is a good example where wealth, growth of low priced foods full of calories, and modernization has accompanied diets that have rapidly changed. For example, the decrease in vegetable oil price has increased the daily consumption from one tablespoon to 2.5 tablespoons from 1989-2004 that is 183 calories amount consumed (Sacks et al. 2009, p. 79). Also, the use of animal products has increased, which increases the risk of weight increase. Examples of animal products include red meat, eggs, mutton, and dairy. Refined grains such as rice can also contribute to weight increase. Recently, 20% and 10% of men and women respectively consume sugary drinks per day (Reddy 2002, p. 235). This has increased the sugar levels in human bodies hence weight increase. Coca Cola beverages are the sugary drinks that have shot up so high in the world with fair prices that everyone can afford.

There are also many reasons why people cannot avoid obesity. Some of them are a result of hereditary factors, combined with personal diet, exercise, and environmental choices. Changes in diet, physical activities increase, and behavior changes can reduce weight loss and prevent these obesity problems. Family genes inheritance influences if a person can be affected by obesity. Genes from parents determine the amount of fat, which a body can store. Also, the genes play an essential role in converting food into energy, and burning up of calories when exercising. Diets that lack vegetables and fruits or abundant fast food have high calories that contribute to weight gain.

Health Promotes Obesity

People have different reactions to different medications on specific diseases. Obesity can be seen or traced from a medical cause to some people. For example, there is Cushing syndrome, Prader-Will syndrome, and other different conditions. Some medical problems, for instance, arthritis, decreases the level in which people are exposed to do physical exercises, therefore, resulting in weight gain. To reduce these medication problems, a person should compensate them with activities or diets. For example, medications of anti-seizure, antidepressants, diabetes, beta-blockers, and steroids. Some of the medicines that are administered can cause weight gain or its side effects. This is because some stimulate appetite, resulting in the patient eating more. Different drugs have different effects, such as body absorption and glucose storage can be affected, which leads to the deposition of fats. Others can slower down the calories burns hence changing the metabolism of the body, while others cause fatigue making it difficult for people under medication to exercise. Another effect of drugs is water retention, which does not necessarily add fat but weight.

Other related causes that lead to obesity are age, pregnancy, sleep deprivation, and stress. Some women find it hard to cut out the weight when they give birth. Not having enough time to sleep also leads to hormones imbalance that increases appetite or food cravings leading to high consumption of calories. Stress is caused by many external factors that can affect the mood of a person and wellbeing. This makes people seek for food with more calories when they have stress. Any person at any age is prone to obesity; however, as the hormones change in the body if a person, lifestyle changes, and many become less active, which brings out high chances of getting obesity.

Role of Government Policy on Obesity Epidemic

Surgeon Generals, called out an action of preventing and decreasing obesity and overweight in 2001, where obesity was identified as a priority to public health United States. With 61% of the adults increase the rate of obesity, several administrators declared actions and are committed to deal with an obesity problem, where the food industries have shown pledges of changes (Blourn et al. 2009, p.503). However, there is still a rise in obesity problems where 19% of children have been diagnosed to be suffering from obesity in 2007 compared with 2008 (Friel et al. 2007, p. 1242). This disease has increased the cost of health care, and so it affected them on personal and economic levels.

There is a wide range of programs and policies from the government which has been implemented that includes national clinical guidelines development, foods that are packed, labeling of the nutrition, labeling of foods with calories and fresh vegetables, and food finances. However, all these efforts only focus on clinical matters and interventions of the community or factors that deal with education. There are scientific and theoretical factors that are growing in support of these policies to reduce the effects of overeating. But some of these policy implementations are facing significant resistance from the industries that deal with food and beverages. Some of the policies that were implemented include behavioral and clinical approaches, recent shifts approach, taxes on sugary drinks, and reducing food and beverage marketing to the children. Two policies deal with nutrition in schools and encourage people to drink more water instead of drinking drinks with calories.

Behavioral Clinical Approaches

Many policymakers have addressed issues on education, clinical and behavioral without paying attention to the factors affecting their environment. An example is Clinical Guidelines on Identification that evaluated and treated obesity and overweight disease on adults alone. In contrast, a report on nature has its focus on individuals of weight loss therapies, changes in diets, surgery, and pharmacotherapy. Other policies implemented by the government do not limit themselves to clinical information but approach social marketing whose aim is motivating the population on diet changes and the purpose of doing regular exercises. The president of America, George Bush, in 2002, launched a united States healthier initiative of people to exercise daily and to eat food with more nutrients (Novak and Brownell 2012, p 2349). This was a challenge from the president of people to engage themselves inactive lifestyles. This was to make people be physically by involving themselves in sports games. The other program included team nutrition from the Agricultural department in the US, where it had a basic educational program of students to make the practice of the food choices and being taught how to differentiate healthy and unhealthy food. This is a program that was best in appealing commercial food marketing to increase s...