America is a land of speed and convenience. We microwave our food, frequent fast food drive-thrus, and communicate via instant messaging and cell phone text messages. We are perpetually in a hurry, so fast food restaurants and "fast" food that we can pop from the freezer into the microwave at home are highly appealing. Busy parents juggling work and home are grateful for shortcuts that can save them time, and workers expected to stay at their desks all day make use of fast food snacks and meals from vending machines to comply with strict rules. Even elementary, middle school, and high school students get fast food at school. Their cafeterias give them hot dogs, hamburgers, and French fries, among other nutritionally imbalanced or nutritionally empty foods, and the vending machines are stocked with sodas and candy. We have become a nation of fast food eaters, and that food is killing all of us.
The effects on our health as a nation have been deleterious. Not only are the food-related conditions of obesity, cancer, and diabetes rampant in our society, children-who in years past only acquired these conditions in small numbers-are now afflicted with them nearly as much as adults are. In a recent policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition decries an "'epidemic' of excessive weight and frank obesity in children" (Caprio & Genel 494). Medical researchers state that "The United States has experienced alarming increases in obesity among children and adolescents." (Robinson 1561). A randomized controlled trial of 198 third- and fourth-grade students that had a six-month classroom curriculum designed to reduce the use of television, videos, and video games found that compared with the control group, the children in the intervention group had "statistically significant relative decreases in body mass index...waist circumference...and waist-to-hip ratio, respectively" and that this group a...