According to a World Health Organization article statistics, the obesity epidemic is taking over the world at alarming rates. Let’s take a look at the facts:
- Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
- In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 and older, were overweight. Of these, over 600 million were obese.
- 39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
- 42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2013.
- Obesity is preventable.
Obesity is slowly becoming an epidemic these days because of the general lifestyle that people are leading. The growth of the fast food industry is exponential. It is all about getting ready-to-eat food that is tasty and at the same time, cheap. For students and everyday people who are always on the run and on a budget, ordering takeaway seems like the only option. People usually find it easy and faster to order from a restaurant rather than spending time in the kitchen to work on a recipe from scratch.
The problem is that people are ignoring the fact that a lot of restaurants use ingredients that are not part of a healthy, balanced diet that an individual is supposed to indulge in. There are unnatural components added into food that make the dish delicious, but at what cost? It is a known fact that restaurants use any and all ingredients and cooking processes that are not meant to be a part of the human mechanism, but just so that the food looks and tastes good.
Obesity is mostly related to those who physically look fat and overweight compared to a regular, healthy person. This is mostly true, but those who seem to look “healthy”, that is not being too thin or too fat, could also be included into the “obese” category. According to medicalnewstoday.com: “An obese person has accumulated so much body fat that it might have a negative effect on their health. If a person’ bodyweight is at least 20% higher than it should be, he or she is considered obese. If your Body Mass Index (BMI) is between 25 and 29.9 you are considered overweight. If your BMI is 30 or over you are considered obese.” Therefore, for someone to be considered as being in the safe zone, you need to have more muscle and bone mass than fat overall. This can only be accomplished by avoiding a sedentary lifestyle and living healthily as well as eating natural, preferably home cooked food.
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