Obesity and fast foods: there is little doubt about the link. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. And it is an epidemic that has grown hand in hand, step by step, with the fast food industry.

Eric Schlosser in his brilliant and shocking book, Fast Food Nation, describes the US as “an empire of fat,” and clearly and convincingly blames this on the fast food industry’s doorstep.

Obesity Fast Food Facts

Twice as many American adults are obese today than they were in the 1960s. More than half of all adults and a quarter of all children are now obese. During this same period, fast food has become cheaper and easier to buy.
More evidence of 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, along with its many unwanted side effects: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other maladies.

As people in countries like Japan and China have abandoned traditional healthy diets in favor of fast food, rates of obesity and associated diseases have skyrocketed.

In countries that have resisted the spread of fast food culture, such as France, Italy and Spain, obesity is much less of a problem. The good news is that there is now more awareness of the harmful effects of fast food than ever before, thanks in part to books like Fast Food Nation and documentary films like Morgan Spurlock’s popular and hard-hitting Super Size Me.

There also seems to be a genuine change in people’s attitudes towards food and how it is produced. As Schlosser modestly says of his book: “His success is not to be attributed to my literary style, my storytelling ability, or the novelty of my plots.

“If the same book had been published a decade ago, with the same words in the same order, it probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention. Not just in the United States, but all over Western Europe, people are beginning to question the massive , homogenizing systems that produce, distribute and market their food. I believe that the unexpected popularity of Fast Food Nation has a simple but profound explanation. Times are changing.”

What can we do about fast food and obesity?

So what can we do as consumers to address the problem of obesity and fast food?

First, we can stop supporting unhealthy, traditional fast food chains. We prefer to shop at outlets that sell healthy alternatives. More and more of these restaurants and delicatessens are opening. There must be at least one near you. Support it!

Another thing we can do is pressure our congressman (or congressman or some other political representative if we are in a country outside of the US) to ban all ads promoting high-fat, high-sugar foods to children .

As Schlosser points out, prevention is much better than cure. “A ban on advertising unhealthy foods to children would discourage eating habits that are not only difficult to break, but potentially life-threatening.”

Such a ban may sound far-fetched, until you remember that 35 years ago a ban on cigarette advertising sounded equally unlikely. Five years later, Congress banned cigarette ads on television and radio. And those ads were aimed at adults, not children.

Smoking has decreased since then.

It’s time we do something similar with obesity and fast food.