906_Group_P1

Position Paper – Part One

Name: Joanna Duda, Christine Kim, Danielle Pacelli

Instructions: Please use this form as an organizer for writing your portion of your group position paper. You will be writing the opening paragraphs of the paper. You should clearly and thoroughly identify the problem that you are addressing. You may use your own research and the research from other members of your group. Be sure to follow the MLA citation format that you used when completing your JRP. Your portion of the paper should be a minimum of one page in length.

I. There is a problem in society today. That problem is

Americans are, on the whole, are an unhealthy nation, and many of these health problems are related to consumption of fatty, greasy foods. Not enough tax helps cause the issue of obesity in this country. Fast food statistics showed that eating fast food more than once a week is not good for your health. Fifty million people in the US are dependent on fast food. That is a lot of people eating a poor diet. With tax revenue, it could help discourage consumers from eating fast food that are not good for them and this can also help cover health care, medical search and other items for all Americans. There are already many obese people that have cost Medicare, Medicaid and other private insurers extra money to pay for them. Also, an imbalance of prices between healthy food and unhealthy food causes more consumers to buy the cheap, junk food than the more expensive, healthier food. If we increase tax on fast foods, kids would benefit from a better option of healthy foods at school and a better idea at a younger age of what is good and bad to eat. Another part of this problem is that obese parents are passing on their negative eating habits to their children. Not only would tax revenue help obese people but to everyone as well. If the government imposed sin taxes on cigarettes then why does not the government enforce a sin tax on fast food? Cigarettes have been the most effective weapon to reduce smoking so sin taxing should apply to fast food as well. We need to find a solution to help obesity and not spend so much money for Medicare and Medicaid

II. Facts that demonstrate that there is a problem are: (You may use your own sources and the sources of the members in your group)

The national average of obese children in the United States is 17%. For instance, in Maine the obesity rate went from ten percent to twenty percent from eating too much fast food; which is not surprising when 40% of an average family's food is spent on fast food daily. According to a study by America's Centers for Disease Control and RTI International, obese people cost Medicare an extra $1,486 each, Medicaid an extra $864 each and private insurers an extra $423 each. Since the governments tax cigarettes both to discourage smoking and to pay for its consequences, they should tax the things that make people fat. Research showed that a 1% increase tax on junk food items would decrease purchase of these items by about 25%. A great place for this money to go would be to health care or nutritional education programs which everybody would benefit from. Obesity causes huge medical problems all over the world not just America. Some diseases that are caused due to obesity are type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast and colon cancer, gall bladder, high blood pressure. Eighty percent of type II diabetes is related to obesity, seventy percent of cardiovascular disease is due to obesity and forty two percent of breast and colon cancer is diagnosed among obese individuals. Also another factor that plays a big role in the obesity field is the amount of hospital costs. Hospital costs for children went from thirty five million to one hundred and twenty seven million in just twenty years. Also a study shows that sixty percent of children already have one risk factor for heart disease which is a pretty drastic fact for children of our society. We have to change our society’s way of eating unhealthy foods that cause huge problems for every age group.