When 69% of adults in the U.S. over the age of 20 are overweight or obese, it is safe to say that there is a problem with the American diet. Some may call today's society a generation of fast food junkies. There are multiple causes for obesity, including a lack of grocery stores, an increased amount of media viewing, the cost of a healthy lifestyle, and overeating. These causes are proven to be especially prominent in lower income areas. Governmental agencies and activists have attempted in recent years to come up with solutions to the said causes, but through research and experimentation, there is a common loose thread throughout each of the causes, knowledge. Even with all the plans implemented to make healthy food readily available, nothing can quite be done unless people know what they are looking for when they walk into a grocery store, or what they are doing when handed a pan and a piece of chicken. Knowledge is power, and since everyone has been given the power to control their life decisions, some only need the knowledge to educate themselves on how to carry out everyday functions like eating.

There are many possible causes for such a worldwide epidemic like obesity. Some argue there is a lack of grocery stores in impoverished areas ('food deserts'), that watching television encourages unhealthy snacking and laziness while advertisements promote fast food, that there is a substantial difference between the price of fast food and the price of healthy groceries, and that 'overeating' is something that needs to be monitored and cannot be controlled by any outside forces. Of course, there are many more reasons why obesity is such a problem in today's society, including anatomical reasons, but there are governmental agencies addressing these issues in specific and parental action being taken the most.

'Food deserts' are substantial issues in lower income areas. This term is relatively new, referring to areas of the country that are wiped clean of fruits or wholesome foods. To address the issue of food deserts, a city tax incentive program was designed, planning to bring healthy foods to poorer neighborhoods. "In 2011, a 17,000-square-foot supermarket opened, aided by city money that paid some 40 percent of the costs of its construction." (Sanger-Katz), while governments also developed a Healthy Food Financing Initiative that donated more than $500 million to assist grocery stores to build in areas they did not want to originally. Many states have also produced their own programs to bring grocery stores and farmers' markets to these neighborhoods that lack fruit and vegetable consumption, since obesity rates are statistically higher there. As a result of all of these, access to healthy food increased specifically in the impoverished areas that needed it, but unfortunately healthy diets of majority of the residents did not. With some more research into the results, the National Bureau of Economic Research came up with a discovery. They found that, "no more than a tenth in the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the availability of a nearby grocery store." (Sanger-Katz), instead, they found the education levels of the residents/shoppers became a predictor. People tend to go for the easiest options that will fill up whoever they need to feed which usually means they are calorie dense but not nutrition dense. At the end of the day, people have all of the access to purchase foods but not the slightest clue of what they really need. Their education levels are not at par with those that have grown up in families that cook and shop and have learned skills from watching other people cook.

Watching too much television plays a large role in childhood obesity. Alice Park states in "It's the Ads, Stupid: Why TV Leads to Obesity" that studies have shown that kids that spend more time in front of a television or computer are more prone to eat more calorie dense foods, drink sugary drinks, and eventually grow up to be overweight adults. A U.K. study followed children over 30 years into adulthood, and found that every hour of TV children watch on the weekends at age five raised their risk of being obese adults by 7%, meanwhile a Japanese study discovered that kids that watched TV more often at age three were put at a higher risk to be overweight at age six. "The average American child sees nearly 8,000 commercials on TV for food and beverages, and only 165 of these are for nutritious options like fruits and vegetables," (Park), which surely it can be argued that much exposure will have an affect on a child's eating habits. Advertisements are what adolescent brains are being fed when they lay in front a television, and leaves them believing that snacking is fine because they do it all the time, and a burger and fries is great for dinner because a lot of lively people are eating it in the commercial, and that ice cream can not be that bad when people look that excited to eat it, right? Children immediately become uneducated on the realities of healthy versus unhealthy foods when they are being educated by commercials. Researchers such as the AAP committee (American Academy of Pediatrics') advocate for parents to limit TV time to a maximum of two hours a day, and encourage parents to be proactive in keeping TV's and internet connections out of adolescent's bedrooms. They state it is also a wise idea to "watch television with their kids, so they can educate them about commercials and learn to distinguish healthy from unhealthy foods." (Park). However, in lower income areas, parents are put at another disadvantage. Imagine a single mother with two kids that works multiple jobs all day to put food on the table. When she gets home from work, the kids may already be asleep and therefore she was not present to monitor what they were doing. Forget watching television with her kids to make sure she can educate them; she is not able to even limit the amount of time they spend watching these shows. This puts parents that live this lifestyle in a much tougher position than a stay at home parent and definitely contributes to health issues in these lower income areas.

Unhealthy foods being significantly cheaper than healthy is definitely argued in impoverished communities. Eating out and purchasing pre-made meals becomes awfully expensive based on the size of the family. The cost of eating out is paying per person, and adds up easily depending on how many mouths a household has to feed. Meanwhile mass purchasing ingredients and making meals at home is more cost efficient since it is a form of bulk buying. It is both a nutritionally beneficial experience because calories and ingredients can be regulated, and an educational experience necessary for a child's upbringing. People growing up in food deserts statistically lack ample grocery stores, and ultimately face problems with getting transportation to and from places to buy fresh produce but have fast food places so close. It can be argued that transportation to fast food places is more frequent than one trip to a grocery store farther away once a week. When trying to use the convenience factor as an excuse, though, people need to take into account the long term math behind eating out and eating at home. A quarter pounder with cheese meal from McDonalds costs $5.79 before tax, and consists of a burger with cheese, fries, and a soft drink. For a family of 6, this would cost at least $34.74 to feed each mouth just one meal. However, at a grocery store, one could buy a box of 6 hamburgers for $12.99, buns, cheese, baked fries, and a gallon of water for under $20 and hundreds fewer calories. With just a little bit of research, it is invalid for one to claim that buying groceries is more expensive than buying fast food or eating out. Clay McKnight points out that The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine conducted a study that concluded the average annual cost for a healthy food diet was $5,019 per year, while the convenient food diet (fast food) was $10,298, which is more than double the latter. Oakton Community College also conducted a study calculating the amount of whole food items per person per week, and concluded that it costs about $45 less a week to eat healthy. McKnight's article finishes with an important point, "While fast-food does have the singular advantage of being more convenient, healthy foods provide much greater nutrition at a fraction of the cost." (McKnight). The only thing required besides ingredients is just a little bit of knowledge on how to cook.

With all of these plans being put into work, there are of course many criticisms of each. Implementing a plan that encourages grocery stores building in lower income areas raises much controversy. Wal-Mart is famous for being extremely cost-efficient. With the recent discovery of food deserts, Wal-Mart has been highly criticized for avoiding these impoverished neighborhoods since they are capable of providing people with their need for lower prices. However, according to Cost of Being Poor: Retail Price and Consumer Price Search Differences across Inner -- City and Suburban Neighborhoods Wal-Mart has just as equally been faced with attacks by local stores for preventing the success of community businesses by taking their profits and therefore negatively impacting its owners and employees. These attacks put big corporations in a weird position between choosing to listen to the governments and communities with requests replenish their area with fruits and vegetables at low prices, or listening to businessmen in the community whose families will suffer by their big corporation taking their local profits. Wal-Mart is in the public eye for this issue and helps to identify why building in a food desert has some disadvantages.

Childhood obesity is also linked to an increased television viewing, so it has frequently been ruled as a negative action for children. People argue that it takes away from what children could be doing otherwise, such as exercising, reading a book, or hanging out with friends. "The Good and Bad Effects of TV on Children" contains a study The University of Montreal conducted claiming that the more TV a child watches even in their first few years, the more likely he/she is to be obese and muscularly unfit. It is therefore understandable why parents would take actions to pull their child away from the television screen. However, their prevention can cause negative affects as well. This same article states that, "Studies show that kids who watch educational and non-violent children's shows do better on reading and math tests than those who do not watch these programs." ("The Good and Bad Effects of TV on Children"). They also quote a long term study by Anderson that concludes that preschoolers that watch educational programs achieve higher grades, are noticeably less aggressive than kids their age, and hold school to a higher standard later in life. Most people would agree that valuable life skills such as learning how plants grow, how the human body works, and how to cook are more interesting to learn about when watching TV than reading about it in a book. This creates a personal conflict between a parent getting their child away from television screens to be outside and more active, and a parent encouraging their child's interest in specific shows to further his or her education as a whole. Kids will watch what they want though, and the same example of a single mother with a low income that has to work two jobs comes into play. If her child wants to watch cartoons, she will not be around to make sure he is watching a more educational show unless she were to child-block certain channels which only requires a simple call to cable companies.

Though there are not many benefits, fast food chains do offer some worth that people miss out on when they cut these chains out. The most popular benefit people omit when they follow a strict no fast food diet is the convenience. Fast food menus over a variety of options, thus making a quick stop there to those who don't exactly know how to cook even more convenient. Natalie Stein from Livestrong.com also points out that different types of fast food allow people to try traditional meals from different countries and argues that this expands their cultural palette. While its hard to believe fast food can do anything besides cause health issues, Stein does have a point. There are so many options like Taco Bell, KFC, Subway, Dominos, and Chipotle that are centered around one culture's cuisine. Even if they do not provide health benefits, they provide a background education on that culture's traditional foods. Also, fast food is higher in calories, so those who are looking to meet a calorie count don't have to look any further than a McDonald's Whopper, coming in at 660 calories. There are definitely many downsides to eating fast food very often, but those who strictly diet to exclude it are missing mainly the convenience of it and the increase in calories.

Overeating is an issue that is quite often overlooked and there is not much that a third party can do to solve it. Those who are at risk of obesity or becoming overweight should learn to monitor their portion sizes. Denny-Wilson uncovers that, "Maruyama and colleagues show that the combination of these two factors-eating quickly and eating until full-are additive (odds ratio for being overweight and having both eating behaviours compared with having neither 3.13 (95% confidence interval 2.20 to 4.45) for men and 3.21 (2.41 to 4.29) for women)" (Denny-Wilson 1064). This becomes problematic in a situation such as a teen not eating lunch at all during the school day, and coming home and binge eating everything in sight, and then watching television. Nobody can really stop a person from overeating, so the solution includes self control and monitoring consumption. When combining overeating with other causes of obesity such as watching television, the fact grows into more of a problem. The article also cites a study that identifies food consumption as directly correlated to amount of food served, and that 85% of parents encourage their children to eat more, which results in 38% of children eating substantially more than they would have wanted. Starting unhealthy habits at a young age put a child on the wrong path for the rest of their lives, and the responsibility and finding a fix for overeating falls on parents to teach their kids correctly, and adults to monitor their own portions. So the solution is simple- knowledge. 

An experiment was conducted in San Francisco with incarcerated women that involved cooking and reported by Gilligan. The women gathered around a table looking at the ingredients provided by Soul Food's cooking class, and were in utter confusion. The class was designed to teach low-income women how to cook and eat fresh foods, and to simply give them a background of basic vegetables and their purpose in the kitchen. Women asked if the items were vegetables, while some asked if they had to eat the 'hairs' on the fennel, which the teacher Vera Pittman quickly corrected to be fronds. Most women in the fennel 101 class were from the Bay Area's poorest neighborhoods, and it is unnerving to discover that some people that grew up in these areas do not know how to cook, let alone identify a raw vegetable. They cannot be blamed though, the common sense people hold when they have grown up is based on their experiences and their own personal upbringings. For example, the group of women from the study are from places where health issues develop as a result of a poor diet, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. "They will die, on average years earlier than wealthier Americans." (Gilligan).

The experiment including the Soul Food class aids in exposing the commonality between nearly all the causes for obesity, knowledge. Those who don't grow up exposed to fresh fruits and vegetables obviously will not know how to cook or simply eat them, so what does it matter if more grocery stores are built in their area if residents do not know how to shop in them? Additionally, when children are exposed to so many unhealthy advertisements and spend much time snacking and watching TV they are not being educated on the healthy foods and benefits that come with them. Most people do not even realize that relaxing and eating a bag of chips feels good but leaves their body with 25 grams of carbs they are not working off. Thinking that constantly eating fast food is cheaper than groceries is also result of misinformation and not actually getting out to experiment. Knowledge is lacking too in situations where a person eats until their plate is cleared instead of eating until they are simply satiated. While fueling their body with nutrients dense foods is beneficial, it is not a positive mindset to be clearing a plate even when they are not hungry. With a little bit of research and education, all of these situations could be cured. In proving that knowledge is the issue behind all of the causes for obesity, experimentation and comparison have been the most effective methods because they include real life people and situations. Obesity and knowledge have an inverse relationship. Gaining knowledge on cooking skills, eating healthy, and shopping cost-effectively is the best way to eliminate a toxic lifestyle.

So what is being done about this disconnect from food knowledge? Julie-Olsen Smith, a teacher at Monarch High School in Louisville, Colorado has created a class for nutrition and cooking since she believes they go hand in hand. Instead of doing the traditional home economics class curriculum like baking cookies or pizza, she spends time both educating students on the nutritional value of foods and how to prepare them to receive the most benefits from them. She says examples of what she has the class make is fish tacos or salads with quinoa. Other high schools are following this example, and Victor J. Andrew High School in Illinois is putting a spin on it by relating nutrition to physical activity. Students are also graded on bringing a healthy, home made lunch into school which is an extremely beneficial idea. Howard County high schools in Maryland teach the course similarly to Smith's class. However, they focus a big portion of their lessons about the food system, and use a free curriculum created and provided by the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future. This program is easily accessible (it can be downloaded directly from the article), and therefore is extremely cost efficient for these lower income areas. Most public schools require some type of home economics credits for graduation, and simply replacing the usual course material with this one is such a simple step. By courtesy of John Hopkins University, areas of all demographics have access to the same lesson plans about nutrition and cooking that schools.

Creating a performance media piece really tied all of this information together. When simply polling 200 Facebook friends, it was concluded that the general population does not know as much about food as they think that they do. 46% of people that had responded to it thought that groceries were more expensive than fast food meals, and 70% of them were people under the age of 25. That speaks a lot about the generation that is up and coming as adults who will soon be educating youth. Furthermore, those that thought that the up and coming generation is capable of sustaining a healthy diet were not able to name basic fruits and vegetables in a produce section such as plums, plantains, mangos, oranges, limes, and onions. Most people surveyed from other countries such as the United Kingdom, Nicaragua, and Mexico said they only eat fast food when in the United States, and that it disgusts them. Also, those that grew up eating mainly fast food or boxed meals daily stated that they have been obese for most of their life. Some people said that they were never allowed to leave the dinner table without clearing their plate and they still do it to this day, while others revealed that their parents did not have enough money to buy healthy groceries so to this day as adults they do not buy groceries as well. This information makes it evident that many habits form in everyday childhood experiences and that later in life many people do not care to or do not know how to change it. These facts along with the rest of the results from the survey constitute why it can be drawn that the general population does not know as much about healthy foods as they think they do, and that the best lessons on health are taught from life experiences.

Education is the key to success in today's society. Obesity is not a relatively new issue, and as the years go by researchers find different reasons as to why it's a growing problem, and government agencies implement laws to combat it. There's a reason why the issue is still prevailing- people's education fails them. Those that grow up in lower income areas have a significantly harder time combating health issues. Without the right experiences from day one, like being exposed to something as simple as an apple, people will not know what to do with it, and with no knowledge, people will not hold the power to make their own healthy, educated decisions to join in the fight against obesity.

