By Gabrielle Onyema

gabrielleonyemnyem.wordpress.com

He doesn’t realize it. As he slowly glances over the red menu with glazed eyes, he points to number two dollar meal.

He is unaware that his diet of grease and sesame seeds will be his undoing.   He is the same boy I have spied at McDonalds every time I’m there. Always, he’s in the golden-arched building and he is sitting, standing…eating.

This anonymous boy has been diagnosed, by myself, as a hamburger addict. He eats them for breakfast and lunch. I presume this because he is always there eating Big Macs whenever I meet up with friends at McDonalds. He has his own horde of friends that appear occasionally, but the most constant thing about his appearance is the Big Mac in his hand.

He is a slave to the sandwich, lost. How many other students wander around the campus with his fault? How many are hooked on foods from the various stores around Lane? A jalapeno junkie from Chipotle? A fried chicken fiend at Popeyes? A donut devotee from Dunkin Donuts?

Though the issue already dwarfs normal high school standards, the Big Mac Boy is only scratching the surface. He may be one of the many results of rising childhood obesity in the United States. Since the 1980s, the obesity rate amongst teenagers has tripled. Many of the foods Lane kids eat are not healthy and the additives in the food lead to tragic cases like Big Mac Boy. The solution is proper instruction on nutrition and it’s importance.

More classes and money should be spent on teaching kids about real food. Students should have a voluntarily grown vegetable/fruit garden on campus that other students may buy food from. Not only does it encourage healthy eating habits to the student body, it teaches students how to cultivate their own health foods and recognize what they should look and taste like. Maybe if nutrition had been enforced like this before, Big Mac Boy wouldn’t be addicted to Big Macs.