MASS CULTURALIZATION AND OBESITY

We are in 2010. Each century, each decade, each year brings new things and different problems. Colonization, World War I and II, invention of computers, Iraq war…these are all some of the most important events in the world history. But, how about today? Which problem are we dealing with in these years? Let me give you a hint, the fast food industry increased much faster than any other industries and people started over consuming fast food. Every day in the newspapers and the TV we see many advertisements for fast food and millions of solutions to lose weight. When you look at the rate of obesity and obesity- related diseases, they increased so incredibly that a lot of people are even dying from them. These diseases are spreading faster than we can imagine, due to the factor of American culture .American culture ,in another words mass culture or pop culture, is so strongly dominating many cultures in the world that many people are already forgetting their traditions or don’t believe in them anymore. For instance, many traditional food recipes are disappearing and fast food franchises like Mc Donald’s or Burger King became the main meal of many families , especially poor and middle class families. So, other cultures are facing the serious risks of fast food as well in the recent decades. What is in fast food that makes it so unhealthy and how does it cause obesity and deaths? Also, how is American culture related to increasing the risk of obesity? How do you connect culture, obesity and death? if a culture is not based on healthy living then it may cause many diseases and even many deaths, that is what is going on in today’s world and it is an increasing concern.

Mass culture is a culture that is disseminated by mass media. Mass culture is not based on deep and rooted beliefs that are generated throughout time by societies; it is the temporarily beliefs that are learned by TV or Radio or Newspapers. So, in this case, advertising plays a key role in mass culture, because it is an easy way of convincing people, also advertisement has a big power of what media really needs to spread mass culture to our society, and to transmit it to each individual. An article by Fouzia Aman called “Social Change” gives a great example of how advertisements affect an individual’s life; “I told him that it is too expensive for him as he is class seven student. In reply he showed anger and increased my knowledge that most of his friends and classmates already have it. All this situation gave me a spark and thought that this type of culture is not rooted in the society or region from the beginning but it is transmitted to individuals through the media.(1)” So, if each individual in our society gets negatively affected by advertisements like that little 7th grade student, then we will definitely want to have everything we see on the TV, including major food brands such as fast foods like Mc Donald’s or Burger King . Today, not just children, but the parents are also keen for hamburger and coke, because it looks delicious and is cheap. So, if we let mass culture to sneak into our children’s and then our lives by media through advertisements, we will have a stronger, and harder time changing mass culturalization in our society.

Mass productions is involved in everything including fast food. Fast food products, which are really cheap and not fresh, are putting our own health in danger and making us suffer from health diseases. For example, some of the health diseases we suffer from are high risk of obesity and obesity related diseases. According to research done by Dr. Arthur Schoenstadt , the negative health benefits of fast food are linked to obesity. Because fast food has trans fat and trans fat has a significant effect on the body and may contribute to weight gain, abdominal obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart diseases (1). Also, Raj Patel adds that “billions suffer the diseases brought on by our bad food industry and a billion people are clinically obese” (1). While millions of people are dying from hunger, that is not fair. We should think how unbalanced the food is system and change our way of eating. Otherwise we may even lose our lives. According to JAMA (American Medical Association) , it is found that obesity has a profound effect on life span (Fontaine et al 5) indicates that early life losses is due to obesity. For example, a person with a life expectancy of 78 years, may have 17 % reduction in total life expectancy due to obesity, or a 20 year old white male is expected to live another 58 years , a 13 year reduction due to obesity represents 22% reduction in remaning years of life (Fontaine et al 5 ) Mass produced food system not just spoils our food system, it also shortens our lives, creates an unbalanced system in the globe and makes the world an unhealthy place.

The fast food industry is increasing and establishing itself incredibly fast almost everywhere in the world, even though millions of people are dying from its unhealthiness. According to Mr. Scholesser; “In Colorado Springs, the fast food industry has grown much faster than the population. Over the last three decades the number of restaurants has increased fivefold. In 1967, Colorado Springs had a total of twenty chain restaurants. Now it has twenty one McDonald’s.”(65). So, as a result of that, a book by Morgan Spurlock called Don’t eat this book declares that, in the last twenty years the rate of obesity has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents and teens (11) and “Sixty-five percent of American adults are already overweight; thirty percent are obese”(9). It is so far so fast! That is a really stunning fact that obesity has spreaded so fast with the growing numbers of fast food chains. That is also not just in the U.S., it is everywhere in the world. For example, In India alone the fast food industry is growing by 41% a year. Mc Donald’s is located in 126 countries,6 continents and operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide. This is proof of how the mass culture and its effects are increasing all over the world.

Most of the fast food restaurants are located in lower middle or poor class neighborhoods. Mr. Spurlock in his book states that “you will see many Golden Arches in lower income areas like South Central and east L.A. that they overlap on the map .Now look at Beverly Hills. How many Golden Arches do you see?” (12-13). He also mentions that obesity rates increases related to the level of education in this poor areas. “People who are college or above educated the obesity rate is 15.7 percent, if it is less than high school education, it is 27.4 percent. So, obviously, lower income folks don’t have the access to health education and information that people of higher incomes do”(12). Low Income households besides their education level, don’t have money to buy healthier food than fast food. So, that shows us that mass culturalization , mostly effects the poor’s lives because of their shortage of money and their inability to access to other alternatives .

The increase of fast food industry is not just affecting the eating habits and health of people, but also, more importantly,it is changing the culture of other countries’ people. According to Raj Patel; “developed” nations are forgetting where food comes from or how to cook it (2). More specifically, from Star Tribune ; “ Doua Vang came to the United States in 1976 when his three children were very young . From the start, he said, they preferred fast food to their traditional foods of fish, rice and fruits. Twenty five years later, he says, parents are even worse off because fast food is everywhere.”(1).It is the same thing from my experience, when my family moved to big cities we started to eat fast food almost every lunch and we forgot to cook our own recipes. Ten years later, I wonder what my culture will look like under the influences of mass culturalization.

In conclusion, mass culturalization is causing early life loss, obesity and culture changes. Soon, many societies will be strangers in their own culture and adapt mass culturalization voluntarily as the way of their new lives. If this change is happening fast in our traditions of food, I can’t imagine how my look , my lifestyle, and mind will be effected by mass culturalization. Then it will teach nothing to our children for the future, but to be mass grownups in the mass culture; in other words to be nothing but lost. Eventually that will affect our choices that we make in food and everything. It definitely will make us unaware of what we are doing and unhealthy.



WORK CITED

Aman,Fouzia. “Social Change”. Bussiness Recorder (2008). Lexisnexis. Web.17 Apr. 2010.

Fontaine, Kevin R., David T. Redden, Chenxi Wang, Andrew O. Westfall, and David B. Allison. "Years of Life Lost Due to Obesity." The American Medical Association 289.2 (2003). Jama. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .

Kingsnorth, Paul. "How the English Malady Became the World's;stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel Portello." Art& Book Review (2007). Lexisnexis. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. .

Lalwani, Sheila. "Obesity on Increase among Immigrants' Kids." Minneapolis Star Tribune. 2 Sept. 2001. Web. 05 May 2010. .


Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

Schoenstadt, Arthur. "Does Fast Food Cause Obesity?" Fast Food and Obesity (2008): 1. EMedTV. 18 Oct. 2008. Web. 05 May 2010. .

Spurlock, Morgan. "2." Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. New York: Berkley, 2005. 9-25. Print.