Description
What doesn’t get mentioned in all this? The truth that the federal government helped create the obesity crisis in the first place—especially where it is strikingly acute, among urban African-American communities. Supersizing Urban America reveals the little-known story of how the U.S. government got into the business of encouraging fast food in inner cities, with unforeseen consequences we are only beginning to take into account. Chin Jou begins her story in the late 1960s, when predominantly African-American neighborhoods went from having no fast food chain restaurants to being littered with them. She uncovers the federal policies that have helped to subsidize that expansion, including loan guarantees to fast food franchisees, programs intended to promote minority entrepreneurship, and urban revitalization initiatives. Throughout this time, fast food companies also began to relentlessly market to urban African-American consumers. An unintended consequence of these developments was once that low-income minority communities were disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic.
In the first book about the U.S. government’s problematic role in promoting fast food in inner-city The usa, Jou tells a riveting story of the food industry, obesity, and race relations in The usa that is very important to understanding health and obesity in latest urban The usa.