Obesity and fast foods - there's little doubt about the link. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United states. And it's an epidemic that has grown side by side, step by step with the the fast food industry.
Eric Schlosser in his brilliant and shocking book, Fast Food Nation, describes the US as "an empire of fat," and he lays the blame for this clearly and convincingly at the door of the fast food industry.
Obesity Fast Food Data
Twice as many American adults are obese today as in the 1960s. More than half of all adults and a quarter of all children are now obese. Over this same period, fast food has become cheaper and easier to buy. Further evidence for the link between obesity and fast food can be found outside the US. Since the early 1980s, American-style fast food culture has spread like wildfire around the world... And obesity has followed, accompanied by its many unwelcome side effects: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and other ills.
As people in countries like Japan and China have abandoned traditional healthy diets in favour of fast food, the rates of obesity and associated diseases have soared.
In countries which have resisted the spread of fast food culture, like France, Italy and Spain, obesity is far less of a problem. The good news is that there is now more awareness about the ill effects of fast food than ever before, thanks in part to books like Fast Food Nation and documentary movies like Morgan Spurlock's popular and punchy Super Size Me.
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