English Essay: Exploring the Causes and Effects of Obesity Worldwide

This essay examines the multifaceted causes and far-reaching effects of obesity, a growing global health crisis. The essay highlights the interplay of factors such as dietary patterns, reduced physical activity, and genetic predispositions as key drivers of obesity. It further explores societal influences like food marketing, accessibility to unhealthy foods, and the impact of insulin resistance. The essay underscores the severe health consequences associated with obesity, including increased risks of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers, as well as economic and social impacts. It references data from the WHO, OECD, and other sources to illustrate the scale of the problem, emphasizing the need for interventions to promote healthier lifestyles and environments to combat the obesity epidemic.

Running Head: ENGLISH 0
Introduction to Management
ENGLISH ESSAY

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Obesity is the disproportion between the deteriorating energy spending because of
physical activity and more energy in the diet. Various amalgamation of causes and leading
factors constitute the reason of obesity including behaviour and genetics. The behaviour may
include dietary pattern, medication use, physical activity and other exposure. Further
contributing factors include and related to our society which includes the physical activity
environment, nutrition, abilities and learning, and food advertising and marketing.
Considering weight-for-height, Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index help in categorise
obesity and higher weight in adults (aihw.gov, 2017).
It is a serious concern considering the society as it is linked with inferior mental
health results, low value of life and one of the major cause of decease in U.S. and worldwide
comprising heart disease, diabetes, and several sorts of cancer. In the westernized society,
obesity is increasingly prevailing due to the increased intake of dietary fat and reducing
physical activity. As per research by WHO, adults aged 18 years comprise of 1.9 billion in
numbers that were overweight in 2016 (who.int, 2018). Out of these, more than 650 million
adults were obese. Worldwide obesity has closely tripled in the middle of 1975 and 2016. In
comparison with underweight, Obesity and overweight are connected to more deaths
worldwide.
Considering OECD nations, it was also founded that more than one in two adults and
closely one in six children are obese. In United States, New Zealand, Mexico and Hungary,
the adult obesity rate is the highest while it is lowest in Japan and Korea due to traditional
habits in dietary, however, are also improved (oecd.org, 2017). Comparing to Americans,
Japanese are also far more physically active.
Hence, it is important to identify the cause of obesity and one of the important cause
of overweight and obesity refers to the imbalance in energy between calories spent and
calories used. Worldwide, the consumption of energy-dense diet is also rising that are more in
fat and also rise in physical inactivity because of progressively facilities available in many
arrangements including changing patterns in work, mode of transportation and rising
expansion of urban areas.
Other than this, genetics is also one of the factors where kids of obese parents are
intend towards to become obese in compare with the kids of lean parents. Moreover, Non-
industrialised civilisations are on the path of become obese when they start consuming a
usual Western intake. Their genetic factor did not change but the situation and the signals

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they led to their genes did. Hence, genetic component possesses a significant impact on
susceptibility to gaining weight (hsph.edu, 2019). The other cause of obesity includes
engineered junk foods that are designed to be cheap, long lasting on the store and so highly
tasty that they are hard to resist. The sales have been encouraged by food manufacturers but
they also encourage overeating. Linking to this, the addiction can be cause due to junk food
in inclined people as these individuals not able to willingly control over their consumption
behaviour same in the manner like people struggle due to addiction of alcohol dropping
control over their drinking behaviour (Wailgum & Perkins, 2018). Therefore, addiction is a
complex issue in case of obesity that is not easy to overcome as it will lose freedom of choice
when one becomes hooked to something.
In this competitive world, aggressive marketing is also one of the corporate unethical
tool causing junk food producers to become immoral at times while they promote very
unnatural items in replace of healthy foods. These businesses also do misleading claims in
extent with their aggressive advertising and one of the worse thing is that this targeting is
especially towards the kids. Approximately 41 million kids below the age of 5 years were
obese or overweight and over 340 million kids and teenagers aged 5-19 were obese or
overweight in 2016 (Ng, 2017).
Other than this, Insulin is also an important hormone encourages insulin resistance in
various obese and overweight people and this cause energy to get kept into fat cells. Many
revisions have shown that higher levels of insulin having a causal role in the growth of
obesity. In terms of particular medications, various drugs in pharmaceutical also lead to gain
in weight as a side effect as they change the body functions of the body and decreasing rate
of metabolic. Another factor that dramatically influences people waistline is the availability
of food which is rising massively. Food, mainly the junk food is displaying on shelf gaining
attention to large number of crowd and impacting the internal drive and will of people.
Considering all, this modern eating habits, as well as food culture, need to be changed
so as to reverse the issue on a larger scale or else it will have a significant effect in many
ways. It will bring various health concerns as individuals who have obesity, relation to those
with have a healthy weight, are at greater risk such as high blood pressure, stroke, gallbladder
disease, low quality of life, and difficulty with physical functioning (Popkin, 2012). In terms
of economic and social consequences, there will be more medical costs in link with obesity
and overweight that may contain direct and indirect costs related to diagnostic preventive,

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treatment services in association with obesity. The heath is also impacted severely each year
as in U.S., obesity-related settings cost over 150 billion dollars and lead to estimate of
300,000 premature death in the US (oecd.org, 2017). The effect of obesity can also be seen in
several organisations where employees are getting affected. In Woolworths, it was founded
that 80 percent of the senior manager were either obese or overweight and 31 percent were
obese with assessment of 900 store managers (Davies, 2014).
In adults and children’s, there are many aspects leading to increasing obesity rates
among adults and children, however, one simple fact is that: It is possible to prevent people
from obesity and there can be turned around the obesity epidemic by collectively building an
environment where the default option is the healthy choice.

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References
aihw.gov. (2017). A picture of overweight and obesity in Australia 2017. Retrieved from
https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/172fba28-785e-4a08-ab37-2da3bbae40b8/
aihwphe-216.pdf.aspx?inline=true - (Field, 2005, p. 14).
Davies, A. (2014). Woolworths tackles the cost of obesity for employees. Retrieved from
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/woolworths-tackles-the-cost-of-obesity-for-
employees-20140221-337ka.html
hsph.edu. (2019). Obesity Prevention Source. Retrieved from
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/
Ng, B. (2017). Obesity: the big, fat problem with Chinese cities. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jan/09/obesity-fat-problem-
chinese-cities
oecd.org. (2017). Obesity Update 2017. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/els/health-
systems/Obesity-Update-2017.pdf
Popkin, B. (2012). Globesity - Fat's New Frontier. Retrieved from
https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/globesity-sizzler/4144562
Wailgum, T. & Perkins, B. (2018). Globesity - Fat's New Frontier. Retrieved from
https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/globesity-sizzler/4144562
who.int. (2018). Obesity and overweight. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/en/news-
room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight