Let’s Keep the Fat Down: Healthy Eating Solutions for First Year Students to Prevent Obesity

Let’s Keep the Fat Down:
Healthy Eating Solutions for First Year Students to Prevent Obesity


(Fig 1: The Fat Problem)

HERE ARE:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!
AND
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO!
 
Obesity is taking over the U.S.!
Obesity is one major health problem in the United States. It causes more deaths each year than the deaths caused by smoking (Spurlock). By using the body mass index (BMI) method which based on a standard measure that is relating weight to height, we have found that two out of three Americans are overweight. This number puts America to the fattest nation in the world (Akst)! There are 400,000 deaths that are related to the obesity in America annually (Spurlock). Sadly this number is still growing at alarming rates! Studies show deaths that caused by obesity each year is already caught up with the deaths caused by smoking, and this rate is increasing fast! See Table 1.

As we all know that fast food is popular by its convenience and tastes. Most people eat fast food because they can’t really squeeze the time out of their tight schedules to go to sit-down restaurants. First year college students like us just moved out from the loving families, homemade meals are no longer easy to have. We are on our own and free to eat what we want, when we want it. We can also pile on the portions, and indulge in sugary and salty snacks to fuel late-night study sessions (Hirsch). In addition the low prices of food are also one of the reasons why we choose to go to fast food restaurants when we have had enough of the cafeteria food on campus.

Fast food Industries are taking over the kids. Our next generation will be even fatter!
Since the 1970s, the percentage of overweight children and adolescents has more than doubled (Gavin)! With the number of obese children increasing, more people will be overweight in the future!
Most parents don’t want to cook at home anymore, because home meals are time consuming. The kids like having the toys that come with the kids’ meals at the fast food restaurants, and there are also playgrounds at the fast food restaurants. It is hard for the parents not taking the children to have fast food. It is an uphill battle to fight with obesity problems especially when the fast food industries are going against us. They want to keep making billions from the customers. As long as the toys can draw the kids’ attentions, and the food tastes better than any other places, families will ate at the restaurant frequently.
“You are going to DIE if you keep eating fast food!!”
I am sure that most of us have heard how bad fast food is to our health. But has anyone really known how poor the nutrition is in fast food? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock chose to use himself as a guinea pig, eating nothing but fast food from McDonald’s for one straight month to find out how bad fast food really is (Spurlock). Before the “adventure” Spurlock went to four different doctors, he had they exam his health status, everything was normal, the doctors said his health is above average at his age. After his “McDiet” with three meals from McDonald’s every day for thirty days, the results of his health were shocking. Throughout the one month period, he had gained 24.5 pounds weight, which was 13% of his body mass. Fast food also brought him many health problems over the 30 days period. The doctors were surprised seeing Spurlock back in their offices. They were amazed how much fast food can change one person in such a short period of time. With the all problems he had from eating, one doctor concluded that “You are going to die if you keep eating fast food” (Spurlock). This film fully provides the evidence of how fast food really is.
Studies have shown that the younger generations are getting fatter in these days. We need to stop eating unhealthy which has been going on for generations. We are now college students, our life styles have changed a lot after being away from our families. We have lot of freedom being a college student, but having this freedom does not mean that you can stop taking care of your body.
Give up the “Greasy” and Stick with the Healthy Choices!!
According to Dr. Mary G. Enig, a nutritionist is known for her research on the nutritional aspects of fats and oils, she claims that Trans fat are considered as possible cause for: Coronary Heart Disease (Raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol); stroke; diabetes; cancer; obesity; liver dysfunction and infertility etc… (Enig) Amount all kinds of food, fast food happen to have the most Trans fat in it. Eating fast food does satisfy us for a short amount of times, but the after effects only lead us to sickness and a fat unshaped body.

For Your Information:
To break down the not-eating-healthy chain is easy. First of all we need to minimize how much fast food we eat. There are more things that you can do to stay away from gaining weight in this new environment. Good habits like a balanced diet, regular exercise, and getting enough sleep can do more than keep the pounds off — they can also help you stay healthy and avoid problems down the line (Hirsch).
Studies shows that DU students tend to eat healthy on campus. Statistics show that about 98% of DU students eat fast food no more than 5 times a week, and the other 2% eat fast food no more than 10 times a week. These numbers are very low compare to the fact that over one fourth of American visit fast food restaurants every day (Spurlock)! DU students have good senses of knowing how to eat healthy and they are very confident that they believe they are healthy. Table 2 and table 3 provide the statistics for better understanding.


Some Helpful Tips
 Exercises Help Preventing Obesity
Researchers found that students who exercise at least 3 days a week were more likely to report better physical health, as well as greater happiness, than those who did not exercise (Hirsch). Researches also show that the students who do exercises manage their time better than the students who don’t exercise. Many of us tend to be less active as college students. Doing exercises can help keeping in shape. Don’t you want to be more attractive?
 “Stress Free” Please!
Many of us will find ourselves stressed from the school works very often. Sleep is a great way to get rid of stresses! Try your best to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night. Your body can only do the “repair” works when you are asleep. Studies have shown that sleep is also a great way to manage the stress that can prompt overeating (Hirsch).
 Drink, drink, drink!
Hey guys! Don’t get yourselves confused! Here I mean drinking water. Denver is well known as the mile high city. Dehydration happens very often. Make sure that you drink enough water. Water is also better than soft drinks due to the fact that water has no sugar or any other components that can cause obesity.
 Some Healthy Restaurants around Campus
Chipotle, Mexican food restaurant, reasonable price and fast food type restaurant; Sub Way, cheap subs; Spicy Pickle, healthy sandwiches; Bruegger’s and Einstein Bros Bagels…
 Fruits and Veggies
Fruits and vegetables contain tons of the vitamins and other healthy elements we need. They also contain tons of water, and this is another way to get the H2O you need. So remember to have some fruits and veggies daily!
 
Works Cited
Akst, Daniel. "Finding Fault for the Fat." Boston.Com. 07 Dec. 2003. 09 Apr. 2008 .
Balko, Radley. "Big Reasons for Fat Skepticism." Cato Institute . 24 Dec 2004. Cato Institute. 11 May 2008 .
The Fat Problem, "Society Contributes to Obesity: UK report ." The Fat Problem. 21 October 2007 . The Fa Problem. 12 May 2008 .
Gavin, Mary L., ed. "Overweight and Obesity." Kids Health. Aug. 2005. 06 May 2008 .
Gun Violence in America." National Rifle Association Information. Violence Policy Center. 11 May 2008 .
Hirsch, Larissa, ed. "Beating the Freshman 15." Teens Health. Jan. 2007. 06 May 2008 .
Hu, Sean. "Fast Food and Obesity: The Relationships between Fast Food and Obesity among DU Students."1st. 2008.
Mary, Enig. “Lowfat Diets” www.westonaprice.org. 31 Dec. 2001 09 Apr. 2008
< http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/lowfatdiets.html >
McDonald’s PLAYPLACE, "St. Thomas Restaurants." This Week. 12 May 2008
Michigan Auto Accident Lawyers." ACCIDENT ATTORNEY MICHIGAN. ACCIDENT ATTORNEY MICHIGAN. 11 May 2008 .
Schlosser, Eric, and Charles Wilson. Chew on This. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 13-20.
Super Size Me. Dir. Morgan Spurlock. Perf. Morgan Spurlock. DVD. Kathbur Pictures, 2004.

Fast Food and Obesity: The Relationships between Fast Food and Obesity among DU Students

Abstract
Two out of three Americans are either overweight or obese these days. America has become the fattest country in the world. Fast food causes Americans to gain huge amount of weight. There are 400,000 deaths that are related to obesity each year. This research is targeting on college students. To find out why students are eating fast food and how much they know about fast food and obesity. Research is done in form of a survey. Implications of the results and future research are discussed.
 
Fast Food and Obesity: The Relationships between Fast Food and Obesity among DU Students
Introduction
America is now facing a big health problem, obesity. It causes more deaths in America each year than the deaths caused by smoking (Spurlock, 2004). Daniel Akst used body mass index (BMI) method which based on a standard measure that is relating weight to height, found out the amount of fat people has reached about 67%. Two out of three Americans are overweight! This number also puts America to the fattest nation in the world (Akst, 2003). What causes Americans gain so much weight? Is fast food the reason why people are getting fatter and fatter? Actor Morgan Spurlock chose to use himself as a guinea pig, eating nothing but fast food from McDonald’s for one straight month to try to find out how bad fast food really is. The results were shocking. Throughout that one month period he had gained 24.5 pounds, which was 13% of his body mass. Fast food also brought him many health problems over the 30 days period (Spurlock, 2004). There are 400,000 deaths that are related to the obesity in America annually. There must be a direct relationship between fast food and obesity. It is a fact that fast food is bad for you in every way. However, every day one out of four Americans still visits fast food restaurants, and 40% American meals are still eaten outside of home. Sadly the percentage of obese Americans is still increasing.
I decided to distribute a short survey to college students. My main goal is to find out for what reasons do students choose fast food over health food. I also would like to find out if there are any differences in choosing the answers for students with different genders, ages and the year in school. The survey also exams college students’ acknowledges about the relationships between fast food and obesity.
Method
I decided that conducting a survey is the best way to get detailed information from the college students, my research targets. Knowing that students are sick of doing online surveys, I had mine printed out. I distributed the survey to students from two of the resident halls on campus, Centennial Halls and Johnson-McFarlane Hall. Since my survey is to all five-year students and the graduate students. Resident Assistances are my research targets as well. Total of 54 students have taken the survey, 63% (34) were male and 37% (20) were female.
There are fourteen questions on the survey (See Appendix A). Twelve of them are in form of multiple choices. The other two questions were in the form of open-ended, short answers. First three questions were demographic, asking for students’ gender, age and year in school. Basically the rest of the questions can be divided into two kinds of questions: “how-well-do-you-know” questions and “personal-opinion-and-background-check” questions. All the “how-well-do-you-know” questions are in form of multiple choices. There are one true or false question and four statistics questions. Among six “personal-opinion-and-background-check” questions, two are short answers and four are multiple choices. To show my results, I use them into pie charts and graphs.
Results
Total of 54 students have filled out the survey. The age range went from 18 years old to beyond 21years old (See Table 1). Among those students, 85% (46) were first year students, 15% were upper-class students: 11% (6) were sophomores, and 4% (2) seniors (See Table 2). There were 78% (42) students said that they eat fast food. Among the students who said they do eat fast food, 98% (41) of them only eat fast food 1 to 5 times per week and 2% (1) chose 6 to 10 times per week.


Question 6 is a multiple choices question asking the students what percentage of Americans they think visit fast food restaurant daily. There are 20% (11) of the students got this question right, the rest of the students either got it wrong or did not answer this question (See Table 3).

Next question is another multiple choice question, asks students if they think they are healthy. The choices are from unhealthy (the number ‘1’) to healthy (the number ‘5’). A total 24% (13) of students said they are very healthy (5): 92% (12) students were male, 7% were female students. The rest 76% (41) students have picked between answers 2-4 (See Table 4).

Question 9 asked how many immediate family members with obesity related issues the students have. 59% (32) of the students had no immediate family members with obesity related issues at all. 26% had one immediate family member with obesity related issues and only one student had up to 2 immediate family members with obesity related issues.
Question 10 asks what percentage of Americans is overweight. There were 48% students got this question right, the answer was 67% (See Table 5). And question13 asks students whose responsibilities they think is it that families don’t eat healthy any more. A total 41% students said it is parents’ responsibilities, 37% students said it is their responsibilities, 16% of students said it’s the fast food industries’ responsibilities (See Table 6).


The last question asks students if it is true that 400,000 deaths are related to obesity in the U.S. every year. There are 67% students agreed that it is true, 7% (4) students did not think so. The rest 26% (14) students did not know what to pick. Some thinks that car crashes, heart diseases and cancers cause more deaths. There were two short answer questions in the survey. First short answer question asks what fast food restaurant do students like to go to and why. There were total 17 fast food restaurants mentioned in the surveys. The most ranked restaurant was Wendy’s with 10 votes. Taco Bell ranked second with 6 votes. Sub Way, In n Out Burgers and Good Times were ranked third with 4 votes each. McDonald’s, Chick-fli-A, Quizno’s and Chipotle were ranked fourth with 3 votes each. Followed by Carl’s Jr., Arby’s, Jack in the Box, Taco Times, KFC and two other local fast food restaurants.
Discussion
This survey distributed to 54 college students with different age ranges, genders and year in school. Results showed that the amount of males taken the survey and the amount of females taken the survey were not too far apart (34 male and 20 female). Surveys were mostly distributed to the freshman students.
In order to get information from the students, students needed to say yes to the question “do you eat fast food?” because my survey is about fast food. There were 78% students said yes to this question. But among the students who said yes that they eat fast food, 98% of them eat fast food 1-5 times every week. Only 1 out of 54 students eats fast food 6 to 10 times every week. College students do not eat fast food as often as I think they do.
There were only 20% students got the 6th question right. Most of the students thought “47%” was the right answer. The amount of fast food students’ friends and families eat must have some impacts to the percentage students pick on this question.
The next question asked students what their favorite fast food restaurants are. Among 17 restaurants listed in the surveys, Wendy’s got the most votes. Students commented that Wendy’s because it has the best menu choices, tasty food and not as greasy as McDonald’s and Burger King. The healthy salads from Wendy’s were one of the big reasons why they picked Wendy’s. I find out that students choose fast food restaurants by the tastes, and healthy menus. Prices did not seem too important to DU students. Chipotle was chosen for the organic food choices. Organic this word hardly comes up in college students’ food menu.
Male students tend to believe they are healthy more than female students. This result was not what I expected. Usually female watch their weights and they actually care about how many Calories and other things are in what they eat, but male usually don’t. Maybe because female know too much about the nutrition of food, nothing is healthy in their minds.
There were 59% (32) of the students have no immediate family members with obesity related issues at all. This result was very unusual compare to the fact that 67% of Americans are overweight.
Most students (65%) think that obesity causes more deaths than any other diseases, and this is true. Over half of the DU students know that obesity is the major health problems to American people.
Students tend to chose “parents’” more than “theirs” to the question about whose responsibility it is that families are not eating healthy any more. I think one big reason is because students stayed home their whole life before coming to college and they always ate with families. When it comes to responsibilities, parents are the first come up in their minds. There are about equal amount students chose it is their responsibilities not eating healthy. Only a small amount of students think that fast food industries have the responsibility. DU students have pretty good ideas of knowing who need to take the responsibility for not eating healthy.
67% of students said it is true 400,000 deaths are related to obesity in the U.S. every year. From the survey, I see that DU students tend to be healthier than average Americans because the total amount of people eating fast food were low and we most of us know that fast food has a huge impact to the obesity problem in the U.S..
My survey gives me most the information I wanted to know from DU students. I am happy with the results I got. But if I can do my survey again, I would hand my survey to more upper-class students, also expand the number of students taking the survey. I would also add more multiple choice questions about obesity. I want to find out more about how much students know about obesity, like what Tran fat is; what calorie is and so on.
 
References
Akst, Daniel (2003, Dec 07). Finding Fault for the Fat. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from Boston. com Web site: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/12/07/finding_fault_for_the_fat/
Spurlock, M. (Director/ Producer). (2004). Super Size Me [Motion Picture]. United States: Roadside Attractions.
 
Appendix: Sample Survey
1133 Research and Writing Survey: Fast Food & Obesity
This survey is for the purpose of in class research only – the results will not be shared. Do not answer questions you are not comfortable with.
Survey made by: Sean Hu (720)341-6265

1) What is your gender?
Male Female
2) How old are you?
17- 17-18 18-19 19-20 20-21 21+
3) What year in school?
Fr. So. Jr. Sr. Grad.
4) Do you eat fast food? (Skip the next two questions if answer ‘No’)
Yes No
5) If you do, how often do you eat fast food per week?
0 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 20+
6) What percentage of Americans do you think visit fast food restaurants every day?
10%- 17% 25% 47% 67% 80%+
7) What is your favorite fast food restaurant? (Please explain why briefly)
Answer:

8) Do you feel that you are healthy?
Unhealthy 1 2 3 4 5 Healthy
9) How many immediate family members do you have with obesity related issues (including yourself)?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
10) What percentage of Americans do you think are overweight?
10%- 17% 25% 47% 67% 80%+
11) Which do you think causes more deaths annually in the United States?
Obesity Smoking Other:
12) Do you think there is a connection between fast food and obesity? (Please explain your answer briefly)
Answer:

13) Whose responsibility do you believe it is that families do not eat as healthy as they used to?
Fast food industries Yours Parents’ I don’t know Others:
14) About 400,000 deaths are related to obesity in the United States every year.
True I don’t know False

Complete draft Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

Sean Hu
Dr. Linda Tate
WRIT 1133
04/09/08
Complete draft Proposal and Annotated Bibliography
After watching Morgan Spurlock’s movie Super Size Me, I have a desire of finding out everything else that I don’t know about fast food: what kind of impact fast food has done to the whole American society? Is it fast food industries’ fault that almost all the Americans who eat fast food are overweight? Is there anything else somehow get affected negatively by the fast food industries besides the fast food customers? I started my researches with all the questions I had in mind.
Start with the movie Super Size Me, there are many important facts from the movie about fast food. The movie itself is a documentary of how fast food can slowly put someone’s life in danger. Morgan Spurlock put him onto the operating table. He ate nothing else but the food McDonald’s for one month. Spurlock went to four different doctors, had them check his health status, everything was normal, one of the doctor considered him as an average health man at his age. After one month stuffed with three meals of McDonald’s meals every day, the doctors he went visit before told him that his health has gone downhill since he started eating nothing but McDonald’s food, one of the doctor even told Spurlock that he is going to die if he doesn’t stop his “McDiet”. No one has ever done that before in history, and the result was obvious. Spurlock went from healthy to unhealthy because of the fast food.
The following piece of information comes from the article “Finding Fault for the Fat” is found in “The Boston Globe” magazine, by Daniel Akst. He is a well-known journalist who has worked at the LA Times and Wall Street Journal and now writes a monthly column in the Sunday New York Times. He also writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal culture pages, and has appeared in many other publications as well. Akst has noted that based on a standard measure that is relating weight to height called body mass index (BMI), there are two thirds of American weight too much in these days. In another words, only one third of Americans weight what the experts say we should. America is considered as the fattest countries in the world by having six out of ten people are overweight. Roland Sturm, Co-Principal Investigator of Healthcare for Communities analyzed that from the telephone surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between year 1986 to 2000, fourteen years period, and the amount of "morbidly obese" Americans has been quadrupled, that is about 4,000,000 Americans. The super obese Americans have quintupled! Fat people are increasing quickly.
Knowing that because of fast food, we have the biggest and fattest people and obesity is turning into the biggest public health problems in the U.S., and it has already caught up with drinking, smoking, or poverty. There are 400,000 deaths that are related to the obesity in America. Why everyone still getting so much fast food does, aren’t American people scared of fast food leading them to miserable and the danger of death? In this modern world people are well trained to know what kind of food they are putting in mouths, we can easily determine whether the food is healthy or unhealthy. But there is a very important fact about fast food we need to admit, is “fast” itself. Throughout an average day, the times we spend of cooking food and eating are getting ridiculously shorter and shorter day by day. Fast food would be the only way to go. Most of the fast food restaurants have a twenty four seven service time schedule, they cook whatever food you want from the menu, you name it they make it, take them about three to five minutes to prepare the food. The food is inexpensive compare to other food services. And of course, tastes really good! Most of the American families eat out more than cook home these days. Nestlé, the world’s largest food companies argues that one of the major reasons why Americans are getting dangerously fat is because we’re consuming more food than we did two decades ago, largely because food companies maximize their profits by maximizing the amount of food their customers eat. That is a lot more food than what we need to maintain our daily activities. With all the extra energies stored in our bodies, how could we not get fat?
But everything in fast food is bad for you. The worst ingredient possibly contained in the fast food will be the trans fat (trans fatty acids). According to Dr. Mary G. Enig, a nutritionist is known for her research on the nutritional aspects of fats and oils, she claims that trans fat are considered as possible cause for: Coronary Heart Disease (Raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol); stroke; diabetes; cancer; obesity; liver dysfunction and infertility etc… Amount all kinds of food, fast food happen to have the most trans fat in it.
Richard A. Daynard has published an article named “You Want Fries with That?” And he mentioned that there is no such thing called “moderate” smoking, even it is just a little use of cigarette can harm your body. But using eating as an example on the other hand, its condition is biological. Too little of food will do just as bad as too much of food. Now we can see that we are playing fairly important roles here, we control how much we want/ need to eat. What is making us fat has to do with changes in the way we are eating, and the food industries also have the responsible for some of the changes. We still consider it as a meal after the food industries emphasize the size of what we eat. Days after days, we will have to get more food each meal, it happens naturally, even though we don’t physically need that much of the Calories to function. Plus these days, nationwide, there are only ten percent who walks or bikes to schools on a regular basis; compare with sixty percent two decades ago. Popular women clothes size has pumped from size 8 in 1985 all the way up to size 14 in 2002!
Again, I believe whoever is having fast food out there knows that eating fast food is not a good choice compare to a more complicated homemade meals. We are lacking of willpower, our brains are filled with hedonism. No one actually care about their increasing waist lines until the ultimate pains strike onto their body, too much Calories and high cholesterol combined with a sugar high and some heart problems before suing the restaurant for “justices”. No matter if you win the case, or get so much money from it, your health will be lost forever.

Final Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

Sean Hu
Dr. Tate
WRIT 1133, Section 53 (MW 4:00)
April 16, 2008
Proposal
After watching Morgan Spurlock’s movie Super Size Me, I have a desire of finding out everything else I don’t know about fast food. I decided to make it my research topic. I’m sure there are some weird diseases out there that can cause people to gain weight, other than that the only thing would affect us to increase the waist lines is eating. Fast food is one of Americans’ proud “inventions”. America is also the “fattest” nation in the world, are fast food and obesity closely related? I am very interested to find out!
Started with some questions in my head: What kind of impact fast food has done to the whole American society? Is it fast food industries’ fault that almost all the Americans who frequently eat fast food are overweight? Is there anything other than people gets affected negatively by the fast food industries? Why is fast food so fascinating? How much fast food do American people eat every day? How much money do Americans spend on fast food daily? Do most of the Americans care about their over-weighted-bodies? What is the number of Americans that are sick from being too fat every year? If it is true eating fast food can cause so many problems on our bodies, why are we still eating fast food? I started my researches with all the questions I had in mind.
Following by my secondary researches: From the movies Super Size Me, there were many important facts from the movie that surprised me. The movie itself is a documentary of how fast food can slowly put our lives in danger. Morgan Spurlock, the main character of the movie, put him onto the operating table and showed us how bad fast food can be. He ate nothing but the food from McDonald’s restaurants for one month. Before the “adventure” Spurlock went to four different doctors, he had they exam his health status, everything was normal, one doctor said his health is above average at his age. After one painful month stuffed with three McDonald’s meals every day, the doctors he went visit before were surprised how much his health has gone downhill since he started eating McDonald’s food, and they said that Spurlock is going to die if he doesn’t stop his “McDiet”. No one has ever done that before in history, and the result was very significant. Spurlock went from a healthy man to a sick man in just one month.
The following piece of information comes from the article “Finding Fault for the Fat” I found in “The Boston Globe” magazine, by Daniel Akst. Akst has noted that based on a standard measure that is relating weight to height called body mass index (BMI), there are two thirds (2/3) of American weight too much in these days. In another words, only thirty-three percent of Americans weight what the experts say they really should. We can see why America is considered as the fattest countries in the world. More than half of the population is overweight in the U.S. Also the Co-Principal Investigator of Healthcare for Communities Roland Sturm analyzed that from the telephone surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between years 1986 to 2000, a fourteen years period, the amount of "morbidly obese" Americans has been quadrupled, about 4,000,000 Americans. The super obese Americans have quintupled! Fat people are still increasing rapidly!
Because of fast food, we have the biggest and fattest people, and obesity is turning into the biggest public health problems in the U.S.! This health problem has already caught up with drinking, smoking, or poverty. There are 400,000 deaths that are related to the obesity in America annually. Why everyone still getting so much fast food does, aren’t American people scared of fast food leading them to miserable and danger? In this modern world people are “well trained” so that they know what we are putting in their mouths exactly, we should be able to determine whether the food is healthy or unhealthy easily. Obviously fast food is bad for you, but one of the very important facts is that fast food is really fast and also convenient. Hamburgers for example, it was named after a German town Hamburg was long famous for its ground-beef steaks, and Charlie Nagreen was the founder. Back in 1885 Charlie was a young man who wanted to make some money selling meat balls at fairs. He found it is time consuming and the customers would more likely to eat the meatballs while walking round the fair. So he squashed the meatballs and sold them between two slices of bread. Throughout an average day, the time we spend of cooking food and eating is getting ridiculously shorter and shorter. Fast food would be the only way to go because no one has time for food anymore! Most of the fast food restaurants have twenty-four-hour service schedules, they cook whatever food you want from the menu, you name it they make it right on spot, and only take them about three to five minutes. Food is inexpensive, compare to other sit-down restaurant services. Although fast foods take little time to make, they have incredible tastes! Compare to the past, most of the American families eat out more than having home meals these days. For my primary researches, I am planning to hand out some surveys to the college students, full-time workers, and families to find out how often they go to fast food restaurants. This way we can see people at what age eat fast food the most.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food companies argues that one of the major reasons why Americans are getting dangerously fat is because we’re consuming more food than we did two decades ago, largely it is because food companies maximize their profits by maximizing the amount of food their customers eat. Obviously fast food industries are making much more money this way, but are they caring about the customers anymore? Having much more energies than we need only will make us fat and sick. McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc said: “Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself”. It’d be a very good idea having an interview with the managers of the fast food restaurants, my goals will be finding out how much food an average people is getting every meal; how much an average customer spends on one meal; have they (fast food industries) ever concerned about customers’ health and so on.
Not everything in fast food is bad for you, but you will not be healthy eating only fast food that’s for sure. The worst ingredient possibly contained in the fast food will be the Trans fat (Trans fatty acids). According to Dr. Mary G. Enig, a nutritionist is known for her research on the nutritional aspects of fats and oils, she claims that Trans fat are considered as possible cause for: Coronary Heart Disease (Raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol); stroke; diabetes; cancer; obesity; liver dysfunction and infertility etc… Amount all kinds of food, fast food happen to have the most Trans fat in it.
Richard A. Daynard has published an article named “You Want Fries with that?” And he mentioned that there is no such thing called “moderate” smoking, even it is just a little use of cigarette can harm your body. But using eating as an example on the other hand, its condition is biological. Too little of food will do just as bad as too much of food. Now we can see that we are playing fairly important roles here, we control how much we want/ need to eat. What is making us fat has to do with changes in the way we are eating, and the food industries also have the responsible for some of the changes. We still consider it as a meal after the food industries emphasize the size of what we eat. Days after days, we will have to get more food each meal, it happens naturally, even though we don’t physically need that much of the Calories to function. Plus these days, nationwide, there are only ten percent who walks or bikes to schools on a regular basis; compare with sixty percent two decades ago. Popular women clothes size has pumped from size 8 in 1985 all the way up to size 14 in 2002.
Again, I believe whoever is having fast food out there knows eating fast food is not a good choice compare to a homemade meals. But we are lacking of willpower, our brains are filled with hedonism and laziness. No one actually care about their increasing waist lines until the ultimate pains strike onto their body, too much Calories and high cholesterol combined with a sugar high and some heart problems before suing the restaurant for “justices”. Doesn’t matter if you win the case and get so much money from it, your health will be lost forever.

Annotated Bibliography
Akst, Daniel. "Finding Fault for the Fat." Boston.Com. 07 Dec. 2003. 09 Apr. 2008 .
The article talked about how American people are suing the fast food industries; when they should take care of their bodies try to eat healthy instead. Akst is a well-known journalist who has worked for the LA Times and Wall Street Journal and now writes a monthly column in the Sunday New York Times. He also writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal culture pages, and has appeared in many other publications as well. Article came from newspaper The Boston Globe, it is a trustful site.

Daynard, Richard. "You Want Fries with That?" Northeastern University Site. May 2003. 09 Apr. 2008 .
Richard’s popularity is well known over the world as well. He had done some impressive things about tobacco. In this article he talked about the ricks of having fast food, also how people should really treat the fat peoples, we need to treat them as the smokers. Richard Daynard is a professor in the School of Law at the Northeastern University and the chair of the Tobacco Products Liability Project and Public Health Advocacy Institute’s Law and Obesity Project. The web site comes from Northeastern University, a nonprofit site, worth it to look up information on it.
"Fast Food Items Highest in Trans Fat." A Calorie Counter. 09 Apr. 2008 .
This article talks about how much Trans fat contained in different fast food and how bad they are for us. No author found in for this article. Web site is a food web site where people talk about the calories in food we eat daily. It has many opinions of how people think about fast food.
Mary, Enig. “Lowfat Diets” www.westonaprice.org. 31 Dec. 2001 09 Apr. 2008
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In this article Dr. Mary G. Enig had published, she talked about the negative sides of Trans fat. Dr. Mary G. Enig is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the content and effects of Trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. And the site is a government site.
Schlosser, Eric, and Charles Wilson. Chew on This. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 13-20.
This is another popular book that is written by Schlosser. Like Fast food Nation, it is about fast food and Eric Schlosser has been a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the Nation, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Magazine Award and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for reporting. In 1998 Schlosser wrote an investigative piece on the fast food industry for Rolling Stone.
Un Food and Agriculture O. "Do Americans Eat 3,790 Calories per Day?" Diet Blog. 27 Dec. 2006. 09 Apr. 2008 .
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information. FAO is a real organization, it is reasonable to believe what’s on the site.
Super Size Me. Dir. Morgan Spurlock. Perf. Morgan Spurlock. DVD. Kathbur Pictures, 2004.
A documentary film about eating McDonald’s food for a month, true story. Actor Morgan Spurlock directed the movie himself. And used him as a guinea pig, plenty of facts of how bad fast food can cause us. It is a movie that was shown in many theaters.

Reflection of Writing Class

Ten weeks have past b so fast, four more days our secong quarter will be finished.
With in these ten weeks, I have learned a lot in my writing class. The face book project helped me learning different ways to communicate with others, using appeals of pathos worked very well and it was fun trying to hook up with the peers that you don't even know who they really are. We went into the second part of our class, writing refections upon the newspaper articles we have read. It was fun breakin up the article, figuring out what kind of appeals the editors were trying to use. It doesn't feel like the editors from the newspapers are so special any more, they always make mistakes, I have found that out during this part of my writing class. I could write a paper to the editor telling him/her using different appeals will make it more readable to the audiences.
Besides the skills, writing is about understanding. I do a better job now after learning different appeals and that i should use different tones writing to different audiences.

new version of the letter to denver post

Dear Editor:
I totally agree with the article “School nest eggs need explanation”. Almost every university/ college increases its tuition every year. What we have to pay for our education is getting ridiculously unaffordable.
As an international student, I come from China, students like me have to pay much more tuitions than what U.S. citizens; plus a higher living costs, I don’t know how long my parents still can pay for me while the schools are increasing their tuitions 15% a year. That means when I graduate from college my parents will have to pay at least $220,000 just for my tuition!
The spokeswoman of CU, Gigi Reynold said that 90% of the money CU collect from students will be donated somewhere outside of the school. I understand that with the extra budgets schools can be able to give out scholarships and improve the campus like building a nicer gym. But school is the place for education after all, and not every poor student is lucky enough to get scholarship, many of them lose their chances to go to a good school because of money problems.
Let us not change the true meanings of schools.

Write About Declaration of Independence

In the document Thomas Jefferson has made many ethos appeals. He gave his audience facts to prove that his points of views were right. “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world…” This sentence was from the transcript of the document. And because of all the ethos appeals, the document seemed more forceful, and easier to fall for, to believe in. At the same time there are a lot of appeals to logo as well. There were about twenty similar sentences followed up: started with the letter “he”; He talked about the England King and his ridiculous rules and laws to his people. But if you read the sentences, and if you have gone through those facts, then Thomas Jefferson would have used appeals of pathos as well.
He talked about the British King’s Laws to his people, and put himself into his people, here I mean there are many “we” and “our” used in this document. It is an appeal to pathos.