With Chicago named recently the fattest city in the United States, students may want to think twice before taking a big bite out of that next hamburger.

The British Heart Foundation began a campaign in December to fight obesity in British youth.

The campaign

It uses gruesome posters of fast food in raw form to shock children and adolescents into eating right.

The BHF, which cites itself as the “leading UK charity fighting heart and circulatory disease,” shows pictures of gristle, bone, connecting tissue and other animal parts between hamburger buns, next to french fries and on a hot dog as part of the campaign.

The BHF aims to correct the UK’s obesity problem and persuade the government to set higher standards for food quality.

The meat of the problem

“I have heard that hamburgers have ground up anuses, ears and eyeballs,” said Sean Shesgreen, an English professor and an expert on international food.

Shesgreen explained these animal parts are low-quality fillers, but any part of a cow can be labeled as beef, including intestinal tracts.

“Since I read the part about ground anuses being included in hamburger meat it makes me stop and think,” he said.

The BHF has published this information in an attempt to educate the population and encourage healthy eating.

The charity cites ignorance as a contributing factor to high obesity rates.

For instance, a survey conducted by the BHF revealed that more than one in three British children do not know chips are made of potatoes.

Officials: Address problems

“There is no single solution to improving children’s diets, but we must address the problem urgently in a coordinated way,” said Betty McBride, BHF Policy and Communications Director, in a press release.

“If we do not, I fear many of today’s children will die prematurely from heart disease as a result of society’s hesitation or reluctance to act.”

Roughly 280,000 adult deaths can be tied to obesity, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease.

Old habits die hard

Shesgreen said she thinks McBride may be right: shocking people may be the only way to change the habits.

“I used to smoke, even after my mother died from lung cancer brought on by smoking, but when I saw pictures of lungs in different cancerous stages, it really helped move me along,” Shesgreen said. “You remember these things for a while.”

However, Valerie Bezdek, vice president of the Vegetarian Education Group at NIU, said such gruesome pictures are not necessary.

“I don’t think that it’s a good idea to publish pictures that could directly insult others for their decision to eat meat,” Bezdek said.

Vegetarian-friendly future?

Bezdek, who has been a vegetarian for two years, is working with VEG on the Dorm Food Project which aims to add more vegetarian and vegan food items to the menu.

“We’re trying to make it more convenient so that people don’t have to leave their dorm to find vegetarian food choices,” she said.