Obesity and Fast-Food: Don’t Blame the Eater

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I better question to ask it, if you have even eaten a burger at a snack shop, shouldn’t there be a warning label indicating the amount of calories contained in the burger and the harmful effects of consuming it in large quantities. In David Zinczenko’s essay “Don’t Blame the Eater”, the author introduces the reader to the relationship between obesity and fast-food restaurants. Zinczenko admits that by eating fast-foods from restaurants and vendors twice a day, he start becoming obese. Zinczenko asserts that obesity is present in people’s lives because the industries making the fast-foods and negligent on the amount of calories they put on the fast-foods and, they only submit the important information to the concerned parties. He asserts that after joining college, he joined health and fitness industry to which, he observed that he was able to change his life around. As such, Zinczenko is correct about the dangers associated with people eating fast-foods, though he dictates that it should be our responsibility to ensure that we do not eat at fast-food restaurants frequently (Zinczenko, 2002).

One of his claims in blaming the fast-food industries, Zinczenko observes that fast-food vendors are located everywhere, they are appealing to the children and they offer inexpensive fast-foods and are very easy to access. As a result, he is inclined to believe that the easier access to the fast-foods that have low nutritional value is the main cause of the increasing cases of obesity in children. In addition, Zinczenko claims that fast-food restaurants and vendors provide false information on the content of calories contained in the fast-foods. For instance, he claims that, “some fast-food purveyors will provide calorie information on request, but even that can be hard to understand”. Zinczenko insist that companies that make fast-foods are weak and they do very little to protect the consumer. Zinczenko insist that we should check the calorie content of the food we take at the restaurant before we can eat and, so that we can make the rightful decision. However, Zinczenko asserts to the readers that some food companies can provide tricky information that can confuse the customer and make him/her not to understand the calorie content of the fast food. For instance, he gives an example of a company in the website containing list of chicken salad at 150 calories, noodles and almonds that come with an addition 190 calories. The website indicates that after serving the three combinations, one is supposed to have a healthy lunch of 620 calories. However, after reading the dressing packet, one can realize that it actually has 2.5 servings. He explains that after a person has been served, he consumes about 1,040 calories of food, which is even more than the 450-calorie super coke. As such, Zinczenko argument has a lot of fact: alternative food contain health amount of calories compares to the fast-foods such as high calorie cheeseburger (Zinczenko, 2002).

Despite his claims, it is important to note that this article was published in 2002; today, there is variety of children’s meals being served in the restaurants containing healthy foods such as milk, fruits and juices. Nonetheless, what Zinczenko intends to be including in the dressing packet, if the amount of calories contained in these fast-foods. Similar to the warnings labeled on tobacco and alcoholics, nutritional foods should also have labels showing calorie content.

References

Zinczenko, D. (2002). Don’t Blame the Eater. New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/opinion/don-t-blame-the-eater.html