Fat Kids R Us

By: Sydney Payne

English 1000
Mrs. Mansfield

Sydney Payne
English 1000
Mrs. Mansfield
October 27, 2015
Fat Kids R Us
Obesity has been a growing disease for the past few years. Kids are beginning to show
early signs of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure by the age of only nine years old.
Obesity is taking over the lives of these innocent children and making it hard for them to do
normal kid activities. Growing up, my family and I were always outside playing some type of
sport whether it be badminton or basketball, we were always active. Now-a-days, you see kids
struggling to walk from their front door to the bus stop. This condition is holding kids back so
they are struggling to reach their full potential. They could be future track stars or MVP of the
baseball team, but they will never find out because they cant run 20 steps without getting
fatigued. This monstrous disease needs to be stopped. The articles I have chosen really reflect the
topic of obesity because they represent the world as it is today, the constant food ads our minds
are being introduced to, how the environment and our surroundings may influence us to make
poor choices, and also personal experiences they may relate to our own.
The Pizza Hut song is used to entertain children. The song has lyrics that you can sing to
and also dance moves to go along with the lyrics. Kids all around the world are doing this dance
and once the song is over, they begin to feel hungry and want some type of fast food for
breakfast, lunch, dinner, or maybe even a dessert from Dairy Queen. Little do these kids or even
parents know that the song they just sang is a mental ad that is causing their brains to crave this
fast food without them even knowing it. The song contains no logical statistics about the actual

food and what it does to your body, but rather gets your emotions flowing by wanting to go out
and buy the cheeseburger from McDonalds. Its like a free mental business transaction.
The next source I decided to use was a news article from BBC, Child Obesity- Why do
parents let their kids get fat? In this interview, it talks about a mom who has let her daughter
become overweight. The mother suffered with her weight throughout her teenage years due to
stress and the way she ate. Her daughter is now following in her footsteps. But, instead of the
mother allowing her daughter to shed it off throughout the years, she wants her daughter to slim
down now so she doesnt get teased like she did in high school. Her mother lets BBC know that
she is responsible for her daughters weight, she lets her eat whatever she pleases whenever she
pleases because life can get rough around that time and she wants to be supportive of her
daughter. She understands now that the decision she made was wrong and now is trying to
portray a way to make her daughter feel better without the constant satisfaction of eating food.
This article shows a sense of credibility because it is a personal experience with a mother who
suffered from obesity as a child. The mother wants us to understand the affect obesity can make
on a person, and wants us to steer clear of it because it is not a way to live life.
The last source I wanted to include for this topic is a research article titled,
Home/Family, Peer, School, and Neighborhood Correlates of Obesity in Adolescents. This is a
study that shows how the surroundings of a child can influence them tremendously. They took
2,793 adolescents and divided them up into girls and boys all around the same age, in the
beginning of the process, they recorded all the BMIs of each student and asked each child about
their eating habits. In conclusion, the children who lived closer to a fast food restaurant, their
BMIs were larger than those who didnt live as close. The reason for this, is that the kids who
live closer have a smaller commute to the restaurant and the food is for the most part

inexpensive, vs. the children who didnt live as close had home cooked meals by parents because
their trip to a fast food joint would be more extensive. The study shows that a childs diet has a
lot to do with their BMI measurement. The more a child makes unhealthy eating options, the
greater their BMI will be. The research article gives statistics and logical information to back up
the theory that what you eat does eventually catch up with you. The article tries to persuade the
parents to keep control of the kids eating habits because eating unhealthy can cause major
medical issues down the road.
Obesity is a disease that is going to continue growing if the parents of the children dont
put a stop to it. Although obesity is a broad topic each one of these articles have similarities and
differences. The similarities of each source conclude that food is the main culprit for obesity.
Each article contributes to a different rhetorical appeal as well and also that, obesity is going to
continue to grow if we dont start controlling what we eat and how much of that something we
eat. We are a generation that always has something to do, which means we dont have much time
to sit down and actually make food. The differences of the sources includes a different story and
a different meaning behind the story. The main moral that all the sources include is that, the food
we eat is the main problem. Bad food= Obesity.

Works Cited
Feldman, Jean R., Holly Karapetkova, and Mark J. Dye. Pizza Hut. Dr. Jean,
2005. CD.
Winterman, Denise. "Child Obesity: Why Do Parents Let Their Kids Get Fat."
Child Obesity: Why Do Parents Let ir Kids Get Fat 26 Sept. 2012: 1-12. Web.
Larson, N. I., M. M. Wall, M. T. Story, and D. R. Neumark-Sztainer.
"Home/family, Peer, School, and Neighborhood Correlates of Obesity in
Adolescents." Obesity 21.9 (2013): 1858-869. Pediatric Obesity. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.