Is Obesity a Disease? Exploring the Causes and Effects of Obesity

Sociology
Communication
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Sociology
There is always a choice. After a long and heavy days’ work there is always a choice for users to
prepare a decent healthy meal or just rush into the various fast food joints in our neighborhoods
and get something quick to avoid the tedious activity of cooking. It is the availability of so many
fast food joints and us being lazy that we continue gaining extra weight. Obesity is primarily
caused by our unhealthy lifestyles of always wanting to eat what is ready and not preparing a
decent meal for ourselves (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, Flegal, 2014). There are other people that are
completely opposed to this fact and they claim that obesity is a condition caused by genetic
factors. Well, is obesity a disease?
First and foremost before we dismiss any claims regarding obesity, it's best that we first
understand the meaning of the term obesity in details. Obesity is often regarded as a disorder that
is associated with an excessive amount of body fat (Furukawa et al, 2017). Obesity is also
associated with various side effects such as increasing the risk of diseases and other health
problems. Some of the associated heart problems that can be brought about by obesity are high
blood pressure, heart conditions and diabetes.
From the definition of the term obesity, we notice that it’s often regarded as a ‘disorder'. This
implies that it's a disease on its own apart from the many diseases it’s associated with such as
diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, some certain types of cancer and strokes. From
this definition, it is conclusive that we can call obesity a disease because of the many effects that
it has on human health.
Statistics indicated that there has been a rapid increase in obesity cases in recent years. Current
data shows that at least 1 out of 5 individuals in America has obesity. Despite the increase in
obesity cases recently, it is important to note that obesity was stated as a disease as early as the

Sociology
17th century. Well, it is the side effects that obesity has such as tremendously reducing a person’s
life expectancy that made it is considered as a disease (Finkelstein et al, 2017).
There have been critics that claim the side effects of obesity are not enough to classify it as a
disease. From that perspective, we all know that all diseases are contracted by various factors
that are unique and have a certain set of characteristics or maybe viruses. Example of some
typical disease is Malaria, botulism and aids just to mention a few. There is a typical way of
contacting all these diseases. Let us take an example of aids, for one to contract aids then there
are certain specific ways of doing that such as through having sexual intercourse with an infected
person, and through sharing of sharp objects with an infected person among other ways. For
obesity, it’s caused by overeating and high levels of inactivity.
When we compare obesity to drinking and smoking we notice that smoking has some really
harmful side effects such as lung cancer while drinking causes liver cirrhosis and alcoholism.
Despite the effects that smoking and drinking have on the human body, they are not considered
as a disease. Obesity, however, is considered a disease because it causes direct damage to the
body. Its effects can be manifested within the human body through increased fat contents under
major body organs. Obesity is something that can be seen within an individual, it can be
physically manifested (Cawley & Meyerhoefer, 2012).
Moreover, according to the Centers for Disease control and prevention, CDC obesity is basically
a body mass index of 30 or higher and is usually calculated based on an individual weight and
height. According to the CDC, about 18% of children and 34.9% of adults have obesity (Flegal,
Carroll, Kit, Ogden, 2012).