Open the files and examine each of the slides paying close attention to the changes in obesity rates for each state from year to year, and also different regions of the country.Many psychologists explain obesity as the problematic thinking of individuals. “Fix the thinking of each individual,” they might say, “and you’ll fix the problem of obesity.” Alternatively, sociologists are likely to wonder why so many people developed erroneous thinking almost simultaneously. We are much more likely to direct our attention away from individuals, in search of transformative social forces in which individual members of U.S. society have been embedded.Activating your sociological imaginations, develop sociological theories explaining increases in obesity rates. What possible social forces are transforming the shape and health of so many U.S.-Americans? Why have they risen in certain states and not others? Why did they rise when they did?
Finally, given your theories of why it has happened, what is to be done? How will we, as a society, eventually become less obese?
