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