Fighting Obesity in America

            According to James Swierzbin, an astonishing half a million Americans lose there lives to obesity each year. This information and other independent studies by the author and the University of California - Berkeley, have provided the numerical statistics in this report. .
             The health of Americans is in danger because of the make up of our society. Americans are so busy and caught up with there lives that they have marginalized one vitally important issue: Nutrition. Since the nineteen fifties when the drive-thru was introduced our ways of life have become progressively more convenient", leading to a fundamental change in our nations eating habits. The old fashioned family meal with a balanced nutrition has been replaced with fast food joints like McDonald's and Taco Bell and household staples have become frozen pizza and pre-packaged processed meals. This radical shift in Americas eating habits has caused repercussions we never could have predicted. Over the ten year span from 1991 until 2000 the number of obese Americans has increased by 61%. There are over 60 million Americans who are considered obese, which is to say that 60 million Americans have a Body Mass Index equal to or greater than 30 BMI. .
             Body Mass Index is a specific formula that was designed to determine obesity. This number is calculated by dividing a person's body weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. Right now over 20% of our population can be considered obese by these BMI standards. The most alarmingly increasing rate of obesity is of that in America's children. The last fifty years and those to come have come to be known as the information age, and allot of our new technologies have led to this increase in youth obesity. Video game technology along with the increased prevalence of cable and satellite in the home has bred a generation of children who would rather stay inside and stare at a television screen for hours than to go outside and play.