<p>Is the world changing for the better?</p>
<p>Between 1971 and 2000, the daily caloric intake of the average adult male rose from 2,450 to 2,618 calories. Likewise, for the average adult woman, it rose from 1,542 to 1,877 calories. However, the government recommends that men consume only around 2,200 calories and women only around 1,600 calories per day; thus, the average American adult overeats by hundreds of calories each day. This problem is also prevalent among the average American child whereby the daily caloric intake has risen from 80 to 230 extra calories a day. What the average American citizen does not know, though, is that an extra 10 calories per day leads to one or two extra pounds of fat which means, in aggregate, around 30 pounds of fat being amassed annually.</p>
<p>The world today is conferred upon with a myriad of problems from declining economies to terrorism to epidemics to war and peacekeeping and efforts. In light of the recent discovery of nuclear arms in North Korea and Iran, most countries fear or a third World War. However, aside from the aforementioned political conundrums lies an even deeper and perhaps one of the most overlooked problems in the world today that occur locally in people’s daily lives: obesity and obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. These problems, which did not come about until recently, instill additional reminders to the fact that the world, instead of improving, is declining.</p>
<p>In the past, people’s eating consumption and diets were stable and more or less nothing of problems. Now, though, that has all changed in both America and around the world. More than a billion adults worldwide are overweight with at least 300 million of them clinically obese. Childhood obesity, too, has evolved into an epidemic in a significant number of areas around the world with an estimated 17.6 million children under the age of 5 said to be overweight. People are also consuming more and more sugar, an action that leads to, most notably, diabetes. In the late 1970s, the USDA reported that both boys and girls consumed two times more milk than soft drinks. By 2009, that has reversed with consumption of soft drinks dominating over that of milk by nearly 4 to 5 times; that means around one-fifth of children may even perhaps be drinking sodas at the ages of one and two.</p>
<p>The lifestyle habits and qualities of people, in concurrence with their poor eating habits, have also experienced a sharp downturn over the past century. Diseases and risks that come with obesity are now alarmingly high: heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes have all increased by nearly 50% between 1982 and 2008. Moreover to excessive eating, people worldwide have also exacerbated their healths by exercising less with physical activity dropping 23% between 1980 and 2006 worldwide as a result of industrialization (office desk jobs). In America, every state except Illinois does not mandate physical education. It is estimated that the average American child receives no physical activity to only a mere 12-20 minutes each week today then.</p>
<p>Whatever is happening in the world today, obesity and its complications are problems that have gotten a lot worse. They are one of the many other problems that characterize and prove the decline of the world today and its inability to improve and change for the better.</p>