Fast food is slowly killing us, says Hirad Zafari, who’s calling on students across Ontario to boycott unhealthy foods for the month of November.
Zafari, president of the Ontario Student Trustees Association, is making the request as part of a campaign to raise awareness about childhood obesity and the negative health impacts of eating fast food.
Zafari’s initiative is titled, “Stick it to fast food,” and features a playful logo of a fork giving the finger.
“We’re the first generation that’s expected to have shorter life spans than our parents,” said Zafari, 17. “We need to put aside the temptation and use logic to stop because these foods are actually killing us.”
Zafari, who may eat fast food once a week but used to eat it more often, was shocked when the Ontario Medical Association released some findings on childhood obesity last week.
“Almost one in three Canadian children — 31.5 per cent — is now overweight or obese, up from 14 to 18 per cent in the early 1980s,” the OMA report said.
“It means today’s children may be the first in the history of North America to live shorter lives than their parents,” the OMA report concluded.
“We are raising a generation of children that will suffer from devastating and wholly preventable diseases, overwhelm the health system, and die prematurely,” said OMA president Dr. Doug Weir.
Weir calls the situation “a full-scale public health crisis.”
Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa-based doctor and obesity specialist, said Zafari’s campaign is needed, and wonderful.
“Eating fast food is part of daily life for many people, especially teenagers,” said Freedhoff. “We need to de-normalize the use of fast food.”
Zafari, a Grade 12 student at Don Mills Collegiate, said he hope his campaign’s “edgy and fresh approach” will capture students’ attention.
On top of the playful logo, Zafari will be posting shock-value posters, like the one that reads, “Eat Fast, Die Young,” to grab peoples’ attention.
“It’s what students are going to respond to,” said Zafari, who’s running a website full of educational information where people can make the pledge to not eat fast food for the month of November.
Just a few hours after announcing the campaign, more than 1,000 people had visited stickittofastfood.org and pledged to not eat fast food.
Zafari said the campaign also had 300 ‘Likes’ on Facebook and he’s hoping the Twitter hashtag, #stickit, starts trending soon.
“It’s hard to resist these foods, but they might actually be killing us,” said Zafari.
