Dr. Ro's Ten Secrets to Livin' Healthy by Rovenia Brock Ph.D

Author:Rovenia Brock, Ph.D. [Brock, Rovenia M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-52205-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

Our Obsession with Fast Food

Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on burgers, fried chicken, and the like in 2000, up from $6 billion in 1970. And African Americans are no exception; more than 50 percent of us eat out, mostly in the more than 215,000 fast-food restaurants like Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, and McDonald's. Residents of the United States spend more on fast food each year than they do on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and compact discs combined. Target Market News, a Chicago-based research company that studies African American consumer trends, found an 18 percent increase between 1998 and 1999 on money spent on fast foods, which tend to be high in fat as well as sodium and sugar, and which constitute most of the food we eat in restaurants. Some of our most popular food buys are hot dogs, white bread, and french fries. Why are African Americans—who earned $500 billion in 2000, enough to make us, collectively, the eleventh richest nation in the world—so enamored with the fast-food lifestyle? The answer is simple and applies to people of all races, ethnicities, and income levels: because fast food is easy. High-fat, high-sugar fast foods are widely available, taste good, and cost less than many healthier foods. Vending machines are ubiquitous. KFC now delivers in some neighborhoods, and most fast-food outlets serve breakfast. Even hospitals—more typically blamed for serving food that is boring and bland, not unhealthy—have gotten into the craze: One study found that a third of the nation's top hospitals now have fast-food franchises in their cafeterias. And most of the fast-food chains do a great job of luring children through their doors with toys, on-site playgrounds and movie tie-ins, spending $3 billion a year on television advertising aimed directly at children. So even adults who might otherwise not be tempted are finding it hard to resist those french fries across the table.

But this obsession with fast and cheap food is one of the culprits in the epidemic of overweight and obesity currently sweeping the country. One supersized fast-food meal can contain a whole day's worth of calories. And even if you choose smaller meals, grabbing a burger and fries or a beef bur-rito on a daily basis will add the weight quicker than you can say “drive-through.”That's what happened to Stacie, a 34-year-old mother and Heart & Soul TV viewer who wrote to me after having seen an episode of the show about weight loss strategies. Juggling a husband, a job running a day-care center, two kids, grad school, and all the cooking for a family-owned catering business left little time for preparing healthy meals at home. Six months of nightly fast-food meals and it was Stacie who was supersized, having gained 40 pounds. “I thought I was doing it the right way, ordering the chicken sandwich meal instead of a burger every night,” she says now. “But they always asked if I wanted to supersize, and I always said, 'Why not?'” And though

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