I remember the first time I was introduced to Super-sizing at McDonald's. It was 1992. I looked at my roommate in disbelief when the girl at the counter said that for only 39¢ more I could have jumbo fries and Coke.

Super-sizing represented all that was right with humanity, in my opinion. Like most college guys I ate fast food like a Shop-Vac and wanted to maximize the belly-filling potential of my buck. I ate fast food fast, furiously and frequently. I could relate to the Carl's Jr. ad slogan that says, Without us, some guys would starve.

College students haven't changed their fast food consumption habits, according to a recent report about the massive fast food ingestion at Virginia Tech. The Hokies are lifting Blacksburg fast food joints to national prominence. Tech's Hokie Grill in Owens Hall claims two of the nation's busiest brand-name "express" food enterprises. The Chick-fil-A stand sold more than $1 million in just 9 months last year, making it second in the nation only to the location at the Atlanta airport for the chain's express stands.

Fast food sales at Tech get a boost because students are able to use money in the dining room meal plan to purchase fast food items. Grill manager Steve Opeka says he sees the same students dining two or three times a day in the food court. Freshman Rusty Davis estimates that he and his friends eat at the grill three or four times every week. "I consider myself an avid connoisseur," said Davis, speaking for college guys across America.¹

Fast food and the college life go together like a burger, fries and a Coke. The business of the college coupled with the convenience and above-mentioned belly-fill-for-the-buck make fast food seem like a necessity. This is what makes the findings in David Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation so compelling. The book is an expose on the fast food industry, written with candor and backed up by impeccable research. It's been on on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list since its publication in January 2001.

Schlosser says his motivation for writing Fast Food Nation was that "people should know what lies behind the shiny, happy surface of every fast food transaction. They should know what really lurks between those sesame seed buns. As the old saying goes: you are what you eat."²

After examining all facets of the industry, Fast Food Nation makes it painfully clear that we are a nation literally eating itself to death. Schlosser reports some incredible facts about the obesity epidemic that is currently plaguing the United States:

• More than half of American adults are overweight or obese. An additional 6 million are "super obese" — they weight about 100 pounds more than they should. No other nation in history has gotten so fat, so fast.³
• Annual health care costs stemming from obesity — $240 billion; on top of that, Americans spend more than $33 billion on various weight-loss schemes and diet products.⁴
• Genetics is not one of the causes of the rising rate of obesity, it's attributed to the nations way of eating and living.⁵
• "The cost of America's obesity epidemic extends far beyond emotional pain and low self-esteem. Obesity is now second to only smoking as a cause of mortality in the United States. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) estimates that 280,000 Americans die every year as a direct result of being overweight."⁶

Fast food has infiltrated every aspect of American society and is greatly contributing to the obesity crisis. In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food. In 2000, they spent over $110 billion. "The typical American now consumes approximately three hamburgers and four orders of French fries every week."⁷ The typical college student probably eats twice as many. Americans also drink soda at an annual rate of about 56 gallons per person; that's nearly 600 twelve-ounce cans of soda per person. And Coca-Cola has set a goal of increasing the consumption of its products by at least 25 percent a year.⁸

The caloric content of these meals is horrific because of the size and content of the food. In recent years, the fast food industry has greatly increased its product sizes, without sacrificing profit, in order to attract customers. In the 1950's, a child's size coke at McDonald's measured 8 ounces, now it's 12 ounces. A large Coke at McDonald's is 32 oz. — 310 calories. Consider the caloric content of the following fast food items,⁹ based on reports that an adult woman only needs to eat about 2,000 calories per day, and an adult man needs to consume about 2,800 calories per day.¹⁰

• McDonald's Big Mac and Super-Size fries — 1100 calories, 56 grams of fat
• Taco Bell bean burrito — 370 calories, 12 grams of fat
• Taco Bell Nachos Bellgrande — 760 calories, 39 grams of fat
• Burger King Whopper and Fries — 1250 calories, 70 grams of fat
• Hardee's Super Star and Crispy Curl Potatoes (monster size) — 1380 calories, 84 grams of fat

The cause of America's obesity epidemic isn't just attributed to fast food. The causes are many. For one, Americans are less active than ever before. Students going away to college are perennially warned about the "Freshman 15." It was known that the all-you-can-eat cafeteria food and partying lifestyle weren't conducive to staying fit. But now, college students spend more of their leisure time indoors: playing video games, watching movies and TV — they're much less active than previous generations of students. They also increasingly grab meals on the run to accommodate busy lifestyles.

For students still at home, the fracturing of the American family and increase of mothers in the workplace has left less time to prepare healthy home-cooked food. While the American lifestyle has grown increasingly inactive, fast food advertisers have blitzkrieged the nation with fast food promotion. Americans now eat as if "We Deserve a Break Today" and believe that we should "Have it our way." The result is a nation that — pound for pound — is in crisis.

Fast Food Nation reveals in gruesome detail the sickening realities that exist behind the glitz of the fast food industry — the consumption data and information about America's obesity epidemic are just two threads that run through the book. There isn't room in this essay to relate Schlosser's findings about fast food's advertising techniques that target children, what's in the meat, the working conditions in fast food restaurants, or the chemical flavoring agents that give the food its taste, but they're all equally distasteful.

Schlosser does make it clear that before we point our fat fingers at fast food executives, we've got to take responsibility for ourselves. We must break out of our bondage to addictive consumption. Students may find it difficult to break the habit of fast food addiction.

When I was a student, I didn't gain weight from eating fast food like I do now, so there was no "felt need" to change my lifestyle. My friends and I gorged until we couldn't eat anymore. But this doesn't change the fact that I lived an unhealthy lifestyle. And for my friends and I, when we graduated and left behind our active lives (we played lots of sports), we put on the pounds immediately.

It's important that people develop healthy eating habits during youth, so they can be carried into adulthood. As the statistics show, and as Schlosser says in Fast Food Nation, obesity is incredibly difficult to cure.

Sadly, American Christians seem to exercise no better judgment than the rest of the country when it comes to their consumption habits and levels of obesity. Christians commit to spiritual and emotional health, but as a collective whole don't encourage healthy eating. I've attended church nearly every week of my entire life, and I've never heard a sermon on stewardship of the physical body. But a key facet of being a follower of Christ is the utter submission to Christ of every aspect of life. God didn't create us so we could practice gluttony. Maybe if Christians can surrender their gluttony to Christ they'll have a positive influence on their fellow Americans by modeling lives of healthy consumption. As Schlosser has made painfully clear in Fast Food Nation, the United States is in dire need of people to model healthy lives.

Practicing healthy eating doesn't mean completely abstaining from fast food, and it certainly doesn't mean not eating. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that there's no magic bullet when it comes to staying fit. And many fad diets that limit foods to about 1500 calories per day may produce short-term weight loss, but few have long-term health benefits. The report says that the traditional programs developed by groups such as the American Heart Association and Weight Watchers have the best scientific evidence to back up their health claims. "These programs recommend consuming no more than 30% of calories as fat, limiting protein to about 20% of the diet and consuming more fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates to help satisfy hunger with fewer calories."¹¹

Healthy eating and living is a tall order for today's college student, as it is for every adult in America. But we're losing the battle of the bulge. Even the simplest changes can make a big difference. For instance, switching from a Starbucks Frappuccino to an iced cappuccino with nonfat milk three times a week would reduce caloric intake by 20,280 per year, allowing for a potential weight reduction of 5.8 pounds.¹² Or, if we switch from McDonald's Super-size fries to small fries one day a week, we will reduce caloric intake by 17,160 per year and result in a potential weight loss of 4.9 pounds.¹³

As long as we don't take the calories we save making these choices and apply them to chocolate and ice cream, we'll be taking baby steps toward better living. Hopefully, we can repent of our gluttony, begin living healthier lives by making better choices about what we eat, and change the climate of obesity in our country before it's too late.

* * *

1. Miller, Kevin. "Blacksburg, VA., University Students Gobble Up Fast Food." May 4, 2001.
2. Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation, the dark side of the American Meal. Houghton Mifflin Company. New York, NY: 2001. 10.
3. Ibid. 240.
4. Ibid. 242.
5. Ibid. 240.
6. Ibid. 241-242.
7. Ibid. 6.
8. Ibid. 53.
9. This information is from the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
10. Daily Caloric needs vary depending on a person's level of activity and size. "Some simple choices on exercise, diet, and rest add up to healthy day." Houston Chronicle. November 17, 1999.
11. Squires, Sally. "When it comes to long-term weight loss, there's no magic bullet." Los Angles Times. January 15, 2001.
12. Ibid. A Starbucks Frappuccino has 240 calories, an iced coffee with nonfat milk 110.
13. Ibid. Super-size fries: 540 calories, 26 grams of total fat. Small fries, 210 calories, 10 grams of total fat.