Tobacco, Speed, and…Fast Food?

Ian Parker

Every day, millions of Americans go to their neighborhood burger joint. There, they partake of huge quantities of meat and potato wedges soaked in liquid fat and half-melted ice cream. But why can’t so many people stop? Even after it’s clear that many people in this country have a problem, we go on assuming that it is due to a lack of self-control.

Recently, many studies have suggested that even one or two doses of this type of food can change the chemical balance in your brain and lead you to become addicted to this overwhelming amount of fat and sugar. Your body becomes used to the excess of calories and thinks that anything approaching normal levels is starvation. The chemical leptin, which is released when fat comes into the body, overwhelms the part of the brain that keeps track of it. The amount of leptin goes down slowly, but the longer one keeps eating fast food, the more likely that one’s body will never recover. This may explain why so many people in this country are overweight. After only one meal, they start to feel that they need more food to stay full. The ready access to fast food only encourages people to eat there. It seems that everywhere one goes, there is a vast selection of unhealthy food to choose from.

Almost eighty percent of ESHS students eat fast food often. Freshman Lauren Van Hoy said, “I don’t care. I like fast food.” This is a huge percentage, especially for a category of food that everyone agrees is one of the worst to put into a body. When presented with the evidence supporting the claim that fast food can be addictive, fewer than twenty percent said that they would go less often. This may be a symptom of high-fat food’s stranglehold on the average American’s way of life.

At most recent count, 37 percent of Americans were obese, and 66 percent were overweight. This number has been continually rising since the late 1960’s. Even while Americans continue to have this problem, we are spreading it to everyone we come in contact with. There is no country left that does not have several McDonalds or a few Burger Kings in all its important cities. A few people even think that this is a major cover-up by the fast food industry. Sophomore Justin Bullock said, ”If this is true, then the fast food industry knows it and is just not telling anyone.” There is a book written by a British citizen ago entitled Why Americans Are So Fat – the Reason for the Fattest Country in the World. It is obvious that the ready access to high-fat food is making us the laughingstock of the world, in addition to spreading our problem to friendly nations. If we are to stop this, we must cut down on our intake of fatty food. If we do not do this for ourselves, we must do it for our next generation. It has been shown that a large amount of fat can actually change the genetic structure of small children, making them more likely to crave high-fat foods later in life. This epidemic is not only affecting us, it is also affecting future generations. When people are aware of the chemical dangers of high-fat food, maybe that will influence some to cut down on this addictive and potentially dangerous food.