Fat+Land

Steven Gallagher, Jason Breslow,and Alex Tang

Fat Land: The introduction is all about the author. He talks about the time when he was obese and decided to change. The author used to be a writer with USA Today and wrote about how to be healthy. He talked about when he finally gave up and admitted that he was obese. The author tries everything to get back to a normal weight and this is his story.
 * __Introduction:__**

They found a way to make a really sweet sugar that is much cheaper than real sugar, which was made of corn and they named it High Fructose Corn Syrup. Though it is sweeter and cheaper than sugar, it is also much worse for the body than sugar.
 * Where the Calories came from?**

They started to make hamburgers and fries and other fast food much cheaper, so people will buy it, and make the meals bigger to let people think it is a really good deal, and so that they will get it more often.

They also made soda like Coke and Pepsi sweeter and added more sugar and some even replacing sugar with High Fructose Corn Syrup, making it taste better for your tongue, but worse for the rest of your body.

During the 1970's the economy was not stable, people were very angry about the high food prices and other products that made the average american shell out more money. With people strapped for cash David Wallerstein a director in the McDonald's Corporation used every trick in the book to think that an average american was getting more for their money. He tried combo meals, specials and two for one deals. With people thinking they are saving more money on more food, they would eat more than what they usually would. This didn't help the cause of stopping obesity. In one study Elliot Bloom a marketing genius that studied the people who go to a fast food restaurant. 90 percent of the people that went to Taco Bell for the first time never came back for a second time. These fast food restaurants wanted to try and get these customers to come back over and over.
 * __Who got the calories into our bellies?__**

Obesity became so bad that during the mid 1990's children were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Before that type 2 diabetes was only diagnosed in adults. Some other side effects of obesity were Pseudotumor cerebri which is a type of brain tumor, hypertension, arthritis in the knees because of all the weight that haver to hold on. Studies have been done on obesity during the 20th century and it showed that the poor, and the underrepresented were the most probable for being obese. Of the families that make less than $10,000 a year, 33% of African Americans were obese, 26% of hispanics are obese and 19% of whites were obese. For the families that make $25,000-$20,000 a year 27% of African Americans, 18% of Hispanics, and 20% of whites were obese. And in the families that $50,000 and more in a year had an obesity rate of 23% of African Americans, 22% of hispanics and 16% of whites were obese. A study done by Columbia University showed that for a Saturday morning kids show 41% of the commercials were for high fat foods. Another study done by the University of Minnesota showed that out of the 5000 kids that took part in this study the children that did not eat fast food during the week would average about 1952 calories per day. But a child that did eat fast food once or twice a week would have an average of 2192 calories per day. A child that ate fast food three or more times in a week had an average of 2752 calories per day. In the International Journal of Obesity it said that 44% of African American women were over 120 pounds, and they were had a higher rate of not believing that they were obese compared to whites.
 * __What Fat Is, What Fat Isn't__**

In a study done by the British Institute of Children's Health showed that 27% of Mexican American girls were obese where Mexican American boys had an obesity rate of 23%.
 * __What the Extra Calories Do to You__**


 * __What Can Be Done?__**
 * You can eat less or exercise more.
 * You can teach kids to look at the nutrition facts to make sure that they are not eating more than one serving.
 * Compare foods using the nutrition facts to see which food is better for you.
 * Improve Phys. Ed in public schools.
 * Parents have to be more conscious about what they are buying at the store.
 * Willpower.