Mohammed Fakhroo

Professor Scott, Bryant

ENGL104

June 24, 2022 Banning Fast Food Restaurants

Should fast-food restaurants be banned from the environment? Junk food Restaurants

have been one of the major problems that the community is facing in each country nowadays

since many unhealthy restaurants are available everywhere. Although junk food restaurants are

cheap and affordable for people who don't have stable earnings, they have caused many issues

for the environment's health. Many people are unaware that junk food restaurants can increase

the risk of diseases since they can lead to obesity and impaired mental health problems. It was

proved that FFA (fast-food addiction) could be associated with health problems, including

obesity, heart disease, and digestive issues (Burmeister et al., 2013). Therefore, the purpose of

the research is to prove the negative effects that could happen to each person individually and

how they will reflect on the unhealthy environment, and most importantly, this should make the

government aware of taking care of their people since many people struggle with eating from

healthy restaurants because they are expensive for people to buy daily. Banning Fast Food

Restaurants will lead the environment to a healthy and positive environment; however, many

people will revolt against the government if they put taxes on junk food, and most importantly,

people are addicted to junk food, which could lead to a negative effect on the environment.

In the research that Shahzad has studied, Muhammad Faisal et al. introduced the relations

between fast-food addiction (FFA) and the fast-food anti-consumption (FFAC) and the

difference between them. This study proved what occurred in China from Sichuan Province
using a random sample of 437 respondents to test the concern about obesity and diseases arising

from FFA can lead to FFAC. As the research was published, studies proved that the availability

of fast-food restaurants affected many people through advertising positively associated with

FFA. Health concerns and food waste were established to enhance negative feelings and

motivate consumers to overcome FFA; therefore, consumers exhibit FFAC over the health

concerns and mental state issues positively correlated with the FFA. This research demonstrates

that fast food restaurants can lead to addiction, resulting in many negative effects on each person

individually. According to the results, binge eating sometimes leads to negative health outcomes,

thus generating intentions to avoid fast food. This study confirmed that FFA leads to FFAC,

whereby a consumer is likelier to stop consuming fast food if obesity and health risks are seen as

high (H5). This result proves that people get satisfied when eating unhealthy food; however, this

is where the side effect of addiction comes to the consumer since obsession leads to negative

results such as obesity and mental health concerns, and people want to avoid consuming junk

food. Even the study proved this fact as they mentioned that if a consumer is health-conscious,

they can control food craving impulses from personal, social, or advertising stimuli, leading to

restrained-consumption behavior.

This study also mentions that obesity and chronic disease saliency enhanced negative

feelings, pushing consumers to find ways out of such states. As a result, consumers exhibit

restrained-consumption behaviors to overcome undesirable mental conditions. Another research

which was proved by the Department of Nursing, National Medical College and Teaching

Hospital, Birgunj, Nepal, describes how junk food has high calories but has a small amount of

nutritive value in a person's body (Junk Food Consumption and Its Association with Body Mass

Index Among School Adolescents). Therefore, the research was conducted in Nepal among 311
private school students who were in grades 8 and 9 who are called adolescents since their age is

around 12 to 17 years old. After the result of the study was revealed, it was discovered that

adolescents who were in the age group of 15 had a BMI value of 18.81±2.35. In contrast, the

majority had 50.5 percent BMI (Body Mass Index, which is the calculation of a person's height

and weight) less than average and were considered underweight. It was also proved that

adolescents waste money on consuming junk food which causes many people to get addicted to

junk food in the environment which will eventually make the whole community unhealthy.

One of the main problems that caused the whole environment to be unhealthy is the

private restaurant owners. Many global brands claim that they contain zero trans fats even

though it was tested out that it includes dozens of them. According to the research, the report

revealed 16 global brands that included restaurants such as Maggi, MacDonald's foods, Top

Ramen noodles, Haldiram's Aloo Bhujia, and KFC's fried chicken that manufacturers of these

products kept their consumers in the dark over the actual contents in the products (Beware

Before Indulging Taste Buds with Junk Food,1). This proves that private owners are careless,

and they don't care about their customers since they are deceiving people with false information

through advertisements and especially the ads that appear everywhere online nowadays.

However, this incorrect information is not only caused by unhealthy food in the environment, but

it is also affected by the level by level of death, injuries, and diseases caused by consumers

buying products such as cigarettes, alcohol, guns, junk food, and motor vehicles. Most

importantly, we cannot forget how business leaders try to frame these negative causes of people

getting injured or dying by just calling them "collateral damage," which means that the person is

responsible for his own problem. One of the solutions that have been proposed by the research is

that the tax approach assumes that the price effects of taxes and subsidies will cause changes in
consumption patterns that will, in turn, lead to improved public health outcomes (Performance-

Based Regulation: Enterprise Responsibility for Reducing Death, Injury, and Disease Caused by

Consumer Products,28). He also stated that "My solution is to assign children to the regulated

firms by pairing the firms with geographically proximate schools where obesity rates are

currently above the plan's nationwide target rate of 8 percent (which is about half of the current

rate)". This will make the environment way healthier and fairer for the global companies to have

the freedom to sell their products without them being affected by the government. This will not

only cause the companies to run their business smoothly, however, but it will also reduce the

FFA since it leads to negative effects, as you can see in the first paragraph.

One of the things that have caused an issue for the health community is the lack of access

to healthy foods. This affected many people through the lack of availability and the high prices

of the restaurants because many people who don't have stable incomes cannot purchase daily

from these expensive restaurants, which increases the rate of obesity. Therefore, a study was

conducted in the US between 1,214 participants to examine the relationship between distance to

store, food prices, and obesity (Distance to Store, Food Prices, and Obesity in Urban Food

Deserts). It was found that almost half (46%) of the sample was obese, compared to a national

estimate of 38.7% for a population matched on gender and race/ethnicity. Most of the obese were

women, educated at some college-level or less, living in a household with kids, and had a lower

adjusted income relative to non-obese participants. However, it was also revealed that obese

participants lived an average distance of 3.5 miles from their major shopping store compared to

3.0 miles among non-obese participants. This illustrates that low-income people cannot afford to

eat healthy food even though the shop is miles away from them. Therefore, the results revealed

that distance to store and prices were positively associated with obesity (p<0.05). When the
distance to store and food prices were jointly modeled, only prices remained significant (p<0.01),

with higher prices predicting a lower likelihood of obesity. Therefore, governments need to be

aware of this citation that has been caused by the private restaurant owners and decrease the

prices of healthy food in the community. Most importantly, governments should also increase the

taxes on junk food restaurants since it can lead to a healthier environment.

The research has also studied how the World Health Organization implemented existing

food taxes in other countries such as Denmark (Taxing Junk Food to Counter Obesity). They

introduced the world's first "fat tax" on October 1, 2011, which aimed to reduce cardiovascular

disease. It decreased obesity; however, Denmark shoppers had found ways to circumvent the

controversial tax by purchasing taxed items across the border, in Germany or Sweden. Therefore,

the fat tax was too short-lived to measure its real impact on the consumption of fatty foods; its

repeal highlights the challenges that may arise from a tax on unhealthy foods. This process was

repeated the same thing in France, which approved its first official soda tax of 1 euro cent per

canned drink in December 2011 as part of a bill to reduce the public health care deficit and

combat obesity. According to the results, by increasing the price of cheap, energy-dense foods,

researchers hope that a junk food tax will make consumers reject unhealthy choices in favor of

less energy-dense foods. Therefore, the government needs to be aware of private owners and

reduce the price of healthy foods and vice versa for junk food for the environment to be healthy.

Banning Fast Food Restaurants has been a significant problem that has been proven in

many studies that it could lead to many negative effects on a person individually and on the

environment. However, there are several advantages that fast-food restaurants have, such as

affordability for people with unstable income and the availability because you can find them in

every place, and it is faster to make, especially for people who don't cook. But there are still
many things that the government could do to balance the situation, such as taxes to counter

obesity, reduce fast food addiction for people who eat daily, and most importantly, decrease the

prices of healthy restaurants for those who have a low-income. This move will make both sides

have the same impact on the demand and prices, which will be an appropriate action that the

governments could take in their country. Therefore, people could have the opportunity to choose,

and the research mentioned above shows that people's obsession leads to negative results such as

obesity and mental health concerns, and people want to avoid consuming junk food. As a result,

many people will eat from healthy restaurants since it will have all the benefits compared to junk

food.

Works Cited

Poudel, Pramila. "Junk food consumption and its association with body mass index among

school adolescents." Int J Nutr Food Sci 7.3 (2018): 90-93.

Shahzad, Muhammad Faisal, et al. “How Does Addiction of Fast‐food Turn into Anti‐

consumption of Fast‐food? The Mediating Role of Health Concerns.” Journal of Consumer

Behaviour, Mar. 2022. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2025.

Sugarman, Stephen D. “Performance-Based Regulation: Enterprise Responsibility for Reducing

Death, Injury, and Disease Caused by Consumer Products.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy

and Law, vol. 34, no. 6, Dec. 2009, pp. 1035–77. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/list-of-years.

Maheshwari, Raaz. “Beware Before Indulging Taste Buds with Junk Food.” Journal of

Advanced Scientific Research, vol. 3, no. 4, Nov. 2012, pp. 01–03. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=85823500&authtype=shib&s

ite=eds-live&scope=site.
Ghosh-Dastidar, Bonnie, et al. “Distance to Store, Food Prices, and Obesity in Urban Food

Deserts.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 47, no. 5, Nov. 2014, pp. 587–95.

EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2014.07.005.

Franck, C., et al. “Taxing Junk Food to Counter Obesity.” American Journal of Public Health,

vol. 103, no. 11, Jan. 2013, pp. 1949–53. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301279.