"As part of Lets Move!, the campaign to end childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama is taking on food deserts. These are nutritional wastelands that exist across America in both urban and rural communities where parents and children simply do not have access to a supermarket. Some 23.5 million Americans - including 6.5 million children - currently live in food deserts. Watch the video below and learn what the First Lady is doing to help families in these areas across the country."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/24/taking-food-deserts
How is it that fast foods are an antecedent to obesity? How does the First Lady propose to change these antecedents to change the behaviors associated with obesity?
Fast foods are considered an antecedent to obesity because fast food restaurants are the only thing available to people in "food deserts". They allow people to emit bad eating behaviors because they have no other options, which leads to the aversive consequence of childhood obesity. Many of us know that fast food is aversive and we stay away from it by going to the grocery store and buying healthier foods. Some people just don't have that option. Michelle Obama proposes that we start opening grocery stores in these "food deserts" in order for healthier food to become available and a source of positive reinforcement for children. These grocery stores will elicit people to begin buying the healthier food since it is available to them, and allowing them to no longer need the fast food.
Number of terms used is 6.
Antecedents as we have discussed all semester are what comes before a behavior, and in this way fast food acts as an antecedent in numerous ways. First, availability plays the largest role in these “food deserts” as fast food is often the only food available in a timely or cost effective manner. Fruits and vegetables only last so long in the fridge so if you have to drive 3 hours one way to get to a decent supermarket you can only afford this once a month at most. Next, fast food by nature is higher in overall as well as fat calories, and deficient in numerous essential vitamins and minerals. So even in places where supermarkets are available fast food still acts as an antecedent to obesity due to the disproportionate amount of calories and fat by volume they contain. These antecedents elicit the response of emitting unhealthy eating behaviors.
Again First Lady Obama is primarily manipulating the availability aspect of the antecedent by spending some 400 million dollars annually to build and maintain a larger number of supermarkets with healthier food items available. Another antecedent to eating behaviors is habits. How have you always attained food, and what types of foods have you chosen? When these choices are fixed for a long time, 10 years in one of the cities she mentioned it is the only thing kids will know and will greatly interfere with their eating behaviors.
A- The availability of high calorie, high fat, low-nutritional value foods (and the absence of alternatives) sets the occasion for
B- Overeating, obesity, and the development of these behaviors into well-established habitual practices which leads to
C- A higher risk of numerous health related diseases and disorders.
The idea is that if you first give people the option of purchasing foods from a supermarket they will see that they are cheaper and also much healthier. You can eat a much larger volume of home-cooked food than fast food. Thus changing the antecedents, the behaviors will change as they are affected by the antecedent, which will undoubtedly change the consequences as well. Rather than implementing an elaborate system of positive reinforcement via tax-cuts or insurance benefits for driving further to purchase supermarket foods, or spending more money on medical advancements that may someday cure diabetes, or greatly slow the development of CVD, or high-blood pressure (though fighting on these fronts is important too) Lady Obama is choosing to manipulate the antecedents to behavior in the hopes that this will have a “trickle down” effect on the behaviors and future consequences.
Terms: antecedents, elicit, response, emit, positive reinforcement, consequences (6)
The problem of obesity is all across America, but what Michelle Obama is trying to address for obesity is in wastelands, poverty stricken areas in America. Right now in these wastelands, it is an aversive cycle. The antecedent is the fast food restaurants that are located all over the streets of low income homes. These convenient stores and fast food places elicit the behavior of eating there rather than preparing a meal at home. The food is cheap and is filled with thousands of calories for each meal. The behavior is that people with low-income jobs are going to purchase food that is cheap and filling at the time to get their money's worth. The consequence is that the people who are emitting the behavior of eating the high calorie food will become obese and have tons of health issues in the future.
What Michelle Obama is proposing to do is change the environment for the residents that live in these wastelands. By changing the environment, which is to increase food markets around the area that people are able to afford, the antecedent has change-->the behavior changes--> then there are differently consequences, preferably pleasant ones.
Aversive, antecedent, behavior, consequence, elicit, emitting, environment = 7
Fast foods are the antecedents because they are all around us. Everywhere we go there are fast food restaurants that far out number grocery stores and other places that serve fresh foods that are healthy for people. As as the video said some places haven't had grocery stores for years so that means people are relying on just fast food joints. The first Lady's idea is that we need to make more places that people can get nutritious foods instead of relying on unhealthy fast foods. If more grocery stores our around then we can reinforce are children with healthy foods and make the fast food crave extinct. Changing our environment is a big part on winning the war on obesity. The antecedents around will determine are behaviors so if we have healthier options around us our behaviors will be healthier and the consequences of this will be less obesity.
A-being around fast food joints
B-eat fast food
C-become obese
A-Having more healthy options around instead of fast food.
B-eating healthy foods.
C-staying at a healthy weight and avoid obesity.