IELTS Essay on Obesity: A Full Answer, and the Cause That Is Really a Restatement

Almost every obesity essay written in the exam contains this sentence, or a version of it: "People are obese because they eat too much and do not exercise enough."

It feels like a cause. It is a restatement. Eating more energy than you spend is what the word obesity describes, so the sentence explains nothing, and an examiner reading it has been given no idea to mark. Model answer pages do not show you this, because they publish the finished essay and never the paragraph that failed.

This page starts with that fault, rewrites one body paragraph three times with the published descriptor bullet named at each step, and then gives a full answer to a real prompt shape.

The prompt shapes this topic arrives in

Obesity is a subject, not a task. The same subject is set as at least four different tasks, and they need different essays:

• causes and measures: why has obesity increased, and what can be done
• responsibility: should governments or individuals solve it
• agree or disagree: unhealthy food should be taxed more heavily
• two part: why are children affected, and what are the effects

If you want the full bank of health prompts sorted by what each one asks, that is in the post on IELTS health essay topics. The point to carry into this page is narrower. Once you have matched the task type, the thing that decides your Task Response mark is whether your reasons are reasons.

The sentence that caps most obesity essays

Here is the Task Response wording from the public version of the Task 2 band descriptors.

Band 7:

addresses all parts of the task presents a clear position throughout the response presents, extends and supports main ideas, but there may be a tendency to over-generalise and/or supporting ideas may lack focus

Band 6:

addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed/unclear

Band 5:

addresses the task only partially; the format may be inappropriate in places expresses a position but the development is not always clear and there may be no conclusions drawn presents some main ideas but these are limited and not sufficiently developed; there may be irrelevant detail

Notice what these bullets are counting. Not vocabulary, not linking words, and not whether the opinion is correct. They are counting whether the ideas are developed. A circular cause is an idea that cannot be developed, because there is nothing behind it. That is why so many obesity essays with clean grammar still come back in the 5 to 6 range on this criterion: the writing is fine and the reasoning has no second step.

The test for any cause you write is one question. Can I say because after it and keep going? "People eat too much" fails the test. "Processed food costs less per calorie than fresh produce" passes, because you can continue: because of that, a household on a limited budget buys it, and that is a budget decision rather than an ignorant one.

One body paragraph, three versions

The task for all three: give one cause of rising obesity and one measure that follows from it.

Version one.

Nowadays obesity is increasing day by day in many countries. The main reason is that people eat too much food and they do not do exercise. Fast food is very unhealthy and it makes people fat. So the government should tell people to eat healthy food and do more exercise.

Three things are wrong, and only one of them is about language.

The cause restates the problem, so there is no main idea to develop. That is the band 5 bullet, "presents some main ideas but these are limited and not sufficiently developed". The measure then restates the cause backwards: if the cause is that people eat badly, "tell people to eat better" adds no step. And "day by day" is a memorised opener carrying no meaning, which is a Lexical Resource issue rather than a Task Response one.

Version two.

One cause is the wide availability of cheap processed food. In many cities a fried meal costs less than a bag of fresh vegetables, so families on low incomes buy the cheaper option. A second cause is the decline of physical activity at work, because more jobs are now done sitting at a desk. Governments could respond by taxing sugary drinks.

This is a genuine improvement, and it is an improvement in reasoning, not in wording. There is now a mechanism: price leads to choice. The paragraph has moved onto the band 6 bullet, "presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed". The underdeveloped part is the last sentence. The tax appears with no link to either cause, so the reader has to build the connection.

Version three.

The first cause is price. In most cities, processed meals deliver more calories for each unit of money than fresh produce does, so a household with a limited budget is making a rational choice rather than an ignorant one. The second is the shift to sedentary work: a clerk who once walked between filing cabinets now sits for eight hours. Telling people to eat better fails against both, because it treats a budget problem and a working day as problems of information. A tax on sugary drinks, paired with a subsidy on fruit and vegetables, acts on the price that produced the behaviour, which is why several governments have chosen that route over advertising campaigns.

What changed between two and three:

Four of those five changes are about ideas. This is the part that surprises most candidates: the quickest route out of band 6 on a topic essay is usually reasoning, not synonyms.

The question, and a full answer

In many countries, obesity is becoming a serious problem. What are the causes of this trend, and what measures could be taken to tackle it? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

An answer written to the band 7 and 8 wording, 287 words.

Rates of obesity have risen sharply in many countries over the last two decades. This essay will argue that the principal causes are economic rather than personal, and that the measures most likely to work are the ones that change prices and city design, not the ones that offer advice. The first cause is the relative cost of food. In most cities, processed meals high in sugar and fat deliver more calories for each unit of money than fresh produce does, so a household with a limited budget is making a rational choice when it buys them. A second cause is the disappearance of ordinary physical activity. Work that once involved walking and lifting is now done sitting down, and cities built around cars remove the short journeys that people used to make on foot. Two kinds of measure follow directly from those causes. The first is fiscal. Taxing sugary drinks while subsidising fruit and vegetables alters the price signal that produced the behaviour, which is why several governments have chosen taxation over advertising campaigns. The second is structural: protected cycle lanes, continuous pavements and parks within walking distance restore the daily activity that car dependent planning removed. Both act on the environment rather than on willpower. Health education still has a role, but a narrow one. Information helps a person who has never read a nutrition label. It does nothing for a person who reads it carefully and cannot afford the alternative, and that is the larger group. In conclusion, obesity in most countries is driven by cheap calories and inactive daily routines. Governments should therefore respond by changing the price of food and the design of cities, rather than by asking individuals to try harder.

The four marks on that answer

Task Response. Both parts of the task are answered, and the position is stated in the introduction and held to the end. Each cause carries a mechanism, and each measure is attached to the cause it treats. The fourth paragraph concedes a point and then limits it, which is how you avoid the band 7 warning about a tendency to over-generalise.

Coherence and Cohesion. Causes in one paragraph, measures in the next, concession, conclusion. The cohesion is mostly structural rather than lexical: "those causes", "both", "that is the larger group" all point backwards without a linking word. The band 7 bullet asks for a range of cohesive devices used appropriately, "although there may be some under-/over-use", and referencing counts as a device.

Lexical Resource. The topic vocabulary is ordinary. What is doing the work is precision: "price signal", "car dependent planning", "for each unit of money". No synonym for obesity has been forced in, which matters, because a thesaurus substitute like "corpulence" in an exam essay reads as a word choice error rather than as range.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy. A mix of relative clauses, a colon, participle clauses and two contrastive structures. Nothing is complex for its own sake.

For comparison, a longer worked obesity answer with per criterion estimates sits in the sample library as a causes and solutions essay on obesity, and the related prompt about taxing unhealthy food is there too. The full set is on the Task 2 samples hub. Those bands are estimates produced by Bandly's own engine, not marks from a qualified examiner, so read them as a guide to which criterion is weakest rather than as a score.

Where the vocabulary marks actually are

Candidates revising this topic usually collect nouns: sedentary lifestyle, calorie intake, processed food, body mass index. Those are useful and they are not where the marks are. The band 8 Lexical Resource bullet asks for a wide range used "fluently and flexibly to convey precise meanings". Precision in a causes essay lives in the small words that carry the logic:

• quantity and rate: per capita, for each unit of money, in proportional terms
• hedging a claim you cannot prove: tends to, in most cases, is likely to
• naming the mechanism: acts on, follows from, treats X as Y

A sentence such as "a tax acts on the price that produced the behaviour" uses no specialist vocabulary at all and is more precise than any list of health nouns.

What to do today

Open an obesity essay you have already written. Find every sentence that gives a cause, and apply the because test to it: can you continue the sentence with a second step? Rewrite the ones that cannot, and only then look at the vocabulary.

If you want to know which of the four criteria is holding your answer back before you rewrite, paste it into Bandly and read the per criterion estimates. They are estimates rather than official marks, but they will tell you whether your next hour is better spent on reasoning or on grammar. The method generalises: the same because test fixes a problem and solution essay and a cause and effect essay, and it is also the quickest way to notice you have drifted off the topic you were set.