Overweight?

Many people, all around the world are becoming overweight. This problem is especially common in the United States. Many people in the United States are overweight because of their habits of often eating fast food, and sedentary lifestyles as a result of technology. Compare to other countries for example Turkey; in the United States we can see the people’s overweight problem more often. One of the most important reasons of that is Americans comfortable life, provided by technological developments. Another important reason of that is American’s consumption of junk food such as gravies, dressings, ketchups, mayonnaises more than Turkish people.
In the United States, it is very common to eat at fast food restaurants. There are many fast food restaurants like Burger Kings, Mc Donald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy’s and so on. We can see these restaurants very often. When I came to the United States I was surprised about the diversity and quantity of the fast food restaurants. Almost every 1 or 2 miles I was seeing the group of these restaurants. Now, they still survive and we can understand that fast food is one of the eating habits of Americans. Of course in Turkey there are fast food restaurants but there are not as many as in the United States. Turkish people often cook at home instead of going to the fast food restaurants.

Even if Americans do not go out, most of the time they consume easy to prepare food or canned food. They are also consuming lot of junk food such as dressings, sauces, and gravies that have many calories. Consuming these unhealthy and fatty foods causes Americans to become overweight. The Turkish people eat more healthy food than American people. They prefer to consume fresh food such as vegetables and fruits as substitute meat. For example, in Turkey, people usually use oil, vinegar, or lemon for their salad instead of regular salad dressings that are holding a great deal of calories. However, Americans usually have for their salad with dressings. Consuming healthy nutrition would make differences between being healthy person and overweight person.
Technology is the one of the important reason for Americans of being overweight. Technology is growing very quickly in United States and it makes life easier. Phones, cars, dryers, and the Internet could be good examples for it. When we use technology, we do not need to make effort as much as we used to do it. For example, before having dishwasher, we were washing them by the hands. While we were washing the dishes we were doing much more effort than we are doing now. Another example is dryers; after washing the clothes, we put them in the dryer, before we hanged them on string. Cars would be also a good example for the technology. It makes our life so easy. In United States we can’t see the public transformation like busses, train, and subway very often. Almost all Americans have their own car and they prefer to drive than to walk or to use transportation if any. They drive from their house to everywhere without any effort.
Actually, now we even don’t need to walk from parking place to the store to buy something, we can do that on the Internet or by phone without any movement. Now many restaurants in United States have delivery service such as, Papa John’s. You can call them and they can bring your house what you order. Internet also avoids exercise. We can buy many things on the Internet, books, flowers, foods so on. Of course we can see some of these examples in Turkey but if I compare American people to Turkish people, I would say that Turkish people have more action in their life. For example most of Turkish families do not have dryers. They still make effort to get the clothes dry. Moreover, because of traffic jam, gas expenses, and parking lot problems Turkish People usually do not drive their cars very often like Americans drive. For example, in Turkey many small markets close to our house. Most of Turkish people walk to local market for buying newspaper and bread every morning. In the United States If we need to buy something we have to drive because we don’t have any close place that we can walk. If we would like to walk, even it is hard to find sidewalks. These things seem very little detail but I think that if we get them together it would make a lot of sense.
Americans’ eating habits are very different from those of Turkish people. I can give an example by my own experience about breakfast style of Americans and Turkish people. In United States, many people have breakfast with French toast, pancakes, ham, bacon, eggs, cinnamon rolls that are covering a lot of fat and calories. However, in Turkey, people usually have more healthy food at breakfast such as cheese, tomato, olives, jelly, butter and eggs.
For instance, when I came to the United States, I gain 12 pounds in 4 weeks because of consuming fast food instead of vegetables, having unhealthy foods such as chips, using ketchups, mayonnaises, sauces, gravies. Before I left Turkey most of time I was consuming a lot of vegetables, salads without any dressing, a lot of fruits and water. I was cooking at home healthy food instead buying cookies, chips or ordering fast food. When I arrive to the United States I started to gain weight because of changing the way of my eating habits. I started to have salad with dressing, eat my meal with using different kind sauces and gravies, drinking sodas and having higher calorie food like biscuits and gravies, pancakes, cinnamon rolls. In addition, I get used to easy life quickly and instead of cooking at home, I went to fast food restaurants very often. Another reason of why I gained so much weight was not doing any exercises or not doing any effort because of the comfortable and easy life provided by technology.
In Turkey, to get to my job first of all I was walking to bus station, after took the bus, I was walking to subway and then after took the subway I was walking to my work which is .5 mile far away. There was no chance to go there without walking. Many people go to their jobs like me in Turkey. Now, I am taking my car from garage and I am driving wherever I go. I do not make any effort to go my school or shopping or my friends house.

Turkish people are making more effort and consuming more healthy food than Americans consume. Actually, as I mentioned above, the overweight problem of Americans is based on the technological development and improvements. Fast food and easy to prepare food are technological developments in America and they affect their lives in terms have providing easy and comfortable life style. Of course having comfortable life is very good idea but at the same time it destroy many people’s health.