My Modest Proposal

The amount of obese people living in America is astounding.  Obesity has increased across all demographic groups from 2012 to 2013. I can only imagine it will continue to increase as the years progress if we do not take action and do something about it. It is obvious people are not going to help themselves from this terrible habit; therefore, I have come up with a proposal that should fix this increasing problem.

I propose that every time someone goes to a grocery store they must step on a scale and record their weight and body mass index (BMI). These results then determine what an individual can purchase at a grocery store. The people who are considered obese must only purchase foods that are healthy and natural. There would be certain sections of the store they could buy from. Based on the person’s results they would get a certain colored sticker. Red would be the worst where they could only purchase food from the red section. Orange would be second worst, but they could purchase food from the red and orange section. Yellow could purchase from yellow, orange, and red. You get the drift. The goal is for people to be forced to eat healthy and then as they become a healthier weight they stay eating healthy versus eating fattening foods. This would also give the healthiest a chance to splurge on eating healthy because sometimes we just need it. It can be considered a reward for being healthy. Children would not even have to be tested they would only be allowed to eat from the two lowest sections of healthy foods. This is so their body does not want or crave the unhealthy food and they can train their body to run on only healthy foods. This would create a generation of healthy people. The person at the checkout would make sure they purchased from the correct section. They would check to make sure everyone was buying the correct items.

In addition to helping Americans become healthier, this proposal would hurt the companies

producing food that is unnatural or unhealthy. Because not many people would be allowed to purchase the unhealthy foods greedy companies put on the shelves, they would go out of business or seek ways to make their product healthier so it could be sold on the shelves as a healthy item. It becomes a win-win situation all around.

I think this proposal is a great way to reduce obesity in America and will help start a generation of healthy people.

On a side note, this is a super cool website I found that ranks the states in order of obesity in children and adults. Go check it out! https://www.healthiergeneration.org/about_childhood_obesity/in_your_state/