Read 'n' Seed 2: First quarter of "Don't Eat this Book, Fast Food and the Super Sizing of America"

Chapters and Pages 

I started my book this week called, "Don't Eat this Book, Fast Food and the SUPER Sizing of America." I am extremely happy with the book I chose to read, so far it has been very interesting. I read chapters one through five (pages 1-74) for the first quarter of read 'n' seed.

Main Topics 

The main topics of my book were facts about most American's eating habits. Within this it was talked about the how 65% of American adults are overweight, while 30% are obese (See bellow for definition). Childhood obesity is also a huge issue in America, and causes growing health concerns. Type II diabetes is the kind you can develop through bad diet and excess weight. Type II diabetes is just one of the health issues children are likely to face if their weight is not within healthy averages. One fact that really stuck out at me was that in 1970 there were about 70,000 fast food establishments in America, 186,000 in 2001. McDonald's alone has 14,000 in America, and 31,000 worldwide. In 1986 in reaction to the opening of the first McDonald's in Rome, started the "Slow Food" movement. According to the book "Slow Food" means old-fashioned cooking,with real, fresh ingredients grown and raised in environmentally sound ways. This movement has surprisingly even moved in to the United States, among 45 other counties (when this book was wrote, now to 132 countries).

Terminology

I learned the difference between overweight and obesity. Overweight is when your weight is 10% over the healthy weight for your height. Obese is when you are 30% over the health weight for your height. I was unaware of the "Slow Food" movement before reading about it in my book, and found it to be very interesting.

Implications
I think that as long as a person cares about their health they should care about obesity in America and what they are putting into their mouth. I don't think obesity is anything new in America, most have known that if you don't exercise and eat well you will probably gain weight. To address this issue I think more can be done to teach children when they are younger about proper nutrition and forms of exercise. Yes we all had gym and recess in elementary school and were able to get out running around in then, but now some school are cutting these two things from their programs. Granted it is not many school but it is one way we are only going to dig ourselves in a deeper hole. The book also implied that people need to change no just for them but for their kids because more learn by watching. I agree with this idea, some kids simply follow in their families footsteps of eating habits.