Many representations of junk food include burgers, pizza, hot dogs, processed food, sweets, chocolate, and soft drinks are available anywhere. Some forms of junk food are just like the synthetic juice you see in most markets today, you might think it is nutritious, but the reality is it has tons and tons of sugar, preservatives, and very little purely natural juices. Fast food may not contain any nutritional benefits for the body because it usually contains harmful carbohydrates and fats, and it can be extremely detrimental to cholesterol levels, which does not supply any energy that is useful to the body.
Due to the intake of junk food we people are still pursuing the same way of consuming it and there is no concrete action taken on junk food producers because of these events we could all face any repercussions at a later stage so it is best to have prevention measures in place to prevent these issues in the future.
Our survival depends on our ability to absorb food from our diet out of an evolutionary perspective. Carbohydrates are among the main sources of energy, including sugars. Our desire for food generally increases with its sweetness frequency to increase our energy intake. According to Daniel E. Lieberman of the New York Times, in Evaluation’s Sweet Tooth, he states that “humans evolved to crave sugar, store it and then use it”. He means that from early in history, we did not have sugar and when we did, we would keep to where we would be able to use it in the future because, without it, we would not be able to function.
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Many facets of human existence are largely considered good, and a perfect example is the sensation of sweetness. The term for “sweet” in several cultures signifies satisfying experience, and sugar was introduced with overwhelming excitement into several communities where pure sweetness was unfamiliar. Explain Quote. The taste for processed sugar and sugary foods and beverages has been so high that it has shaped the course of human history, and perhaps unparalleled in the recent and sharp increase in sugar consumption. This change in diet has always been the topic of popular history books and refined sugar’s nutritional and biological impacts. “”. Explain Quote. Transition
According to Balaji Arumugam, Suganya A, and Saranya Nagalingam, states that “fast foods are consumed in larger quantities intended with efforts to minimise or to cease the intake of these items” (Argumugam). Meaning that if a person consumes more the will, in turn, it will be harder to cease the consuming because it is delicious.
Most people eat junk food for convenience. Since junk food is quick and we are living our lives in a rush, there is little time to prepare nutritiously, well-prepared food. So, what do we do? We go to our local food provider and they make it for us. According to a CNN Health article by Jaqueline Howard titled Here’s how much fast food Americans are eating, that a survey containing 10,000 done by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013-2016, state that “44.9% of adults ages 20 to 39 said that they consumed fast food on a given day, compared with 37.7% of adults 40 to 59, and 24.1% of adults 60 and older” (Howard).
That is 4,490 people alone from age 20 to 39. This is important because the higher the percentage is, the more people are eating fast food, and intern creating a habit that it is okay to do so. This has happened because as the times have changed it has created new ways of getting the food that people want. They do not even need to leave their house anymore, now people can order online, and it delivered to them.
GrubHub is a mobile food app, for the US and the United Kingdom, where you order from the restaurant you want, they pick it up and deliver it to your house. According to its website, GrubHub “serves 21.2 million active diners”. That is huge when thinking about how many people would rather get fast food to deliver than make the meal themselves. Now that we have talked about the convincing of junk food, next we will discuss how obesity is a growing problem from too much consumption.
According to Merriam-Webster, obesity is “a condition characterized by the excessive accumulation and storage of fat in the body”. Meaning that a person has more body fat than they can get rid of. Obesity in America is a growing problem, having serious implications for adults and children. Some might argue that this growing dilemma is due to the poor decisions made by the fast-food industries as well as the junk food they have at the disposal of the public.
According to Jason Cook, in Junk Food Diet-Induced Obesity Increases D2 Receptor Autoinhibition in the Ventral Tegmental Area and Reduces Ethanol Drinking, he states that “in the US approximately 35% of adults and 17% of children and adolescents are obese” in 2011 (Page 2). According to Tanya Albert Henry, who is affiliated with the American Medical Association, in Adult obesity rates rise in 6 states, exceed 35% in 7, states that the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) it showed “that 39.6 percent of adults and 18.5 percent of children ages 2 to 19 in America have obesity”.
This was a 4.6% increase in adults and a 1.5% increase in child obesity. This will only continue to increase if nothing is done. What are we doing to fix it? According to James Arvantes, in Federal Government Takes Bigger Role in Combating Obesity, he gives examples of what the government is doing to help; from Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to how they are reforming healthcare. Further on, Mike Lean and Jose Lara of the Division of Developmental Medicine, Human Nutrition, of the University of Glasgow, stated in Strategies for preventing obesity, states that “a successful intervention for obesity prevention must influence energy balance but must also be sustainable”.
They define energy balance as the “‘energy in’ equals ‘energy out’”, meaning that to keep balance you need to equal out the amount of energy in and out because equaling the input and output will help prevent obesity; thus keeping it maintained. Now that we understand prominent obesity is when compared to junk food, let’s move onto better alternatives than junk food.
References
- Mayo Clinic: Is junk food really that harmful?
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: The Nutrition Source
- Medical News Today: What are the effects of junk food?
- National Center for Biotechnology Information: The Impact of Junk Food Marketing on Children’s Eating Behavior
- American Heart Association: How Does Junk Food Affect Your Heart?
- MedlinePlus: Metabolic Syndrome
- National Center for Biotechnology Information: The Perils of Symbolic Fast Food
