Is It 's What For Dinner?

Shifts in the “Food Marketplace” have greatly affected our food choices and habits in the last 40-50 years. As one woman stated in the film The Weight of the Nation, “It’s so hard to combat with what the tv is telling you to feed your kids”. Advertising has come to a whole new level in our generation; you can’t turn on the television without seeing an advertisement for fast food or something equally as unhealthy. As another woman put it, “you are taught that you can eat anywhere, anytime of day, and that eating is a glorious thing”. Another shift that has occurred is an economic one. If you go into a poor neighborhood corner store like they did in the film, you would see chips, sugar, sweets, etc. All of these unhealthy foods are cheap, incredibly cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables. Obesity rates in these poor areas are much higher than in areas with a higher average income. Culturally, our country is changing to one that is always moving; we don’t have time to prepare a meal for the whole family. It’s much quicker to buy unhealthy fast food that you know your family will enjoy than to prepare a healthy meal that they will grudgingly consume. The film mentioned that our bodies were originally built for scarcity. We are wired to react to things that are sweet and contain a lot of fat because when an animal was killed we had to be able to eat as much of it as possible. The signals telling us to stop eating had to be overridden. Now, we consume so much fat and sugar not

In David Freedman’s article, “How Junk Food Can End Obesity” (2013), he begins by discussing his endeavors to search for wholesome food. He continues to come across food items that claim to be healthy and void of processed junk, but all he finds are items high in calories or the expense is too much for an average American. He argues that wholesome foods are actually just as bad, if not even worse, than junk food and that the Big Food industry has the technology available to make food healthier, but still retain its appeal. Freedman mentions continuously throughout his article that Americans who are most at risk of becoming obese are those who cannot afford healthy foods, completely defeating the purpose of the wholefoods movement. He

Pollan defines the American problem as “unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.” (Pg. 3) The vast majority of consumers in our society are ones that envision themselves as striving towards a healthy lifestyle, yet many of these consumers don’t realize that in their attempts at eating healthy they are on a slow decline. A large sum of the population garners their information on which foods to eat from their daily news sources, trying new fad diets and picking up any food that Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post tells them will better their health (Pg. 1). This behavior in turn leaves those desperate for a slimmer and healthier bodies utterly confused and desolate.

Judging from the title of David Freedman’s “How Junk Food Can End Obesity” published in The Atlantic, Freeman's audience, the upper middle class of America, conjures up an image of a crazy Freedman throwing away every piece of scientific data that shows junk food is hazardous to your health. However, this is not the case. Freedman brings to light a more compromising approach to solving America’s obesity problem. His opinion is that by manufacturing healthier fast food we can solve America’s obesity issue and that his method would be able to be established nation-wide in a cheaper, fast and more effortless way than some other methods proposed. Not all, but the majority of The Atlantic’s audience cares about

Scene 1 - If I could invite some famous people to a dinner party I would invite George Washington, Albert Einstein, Michael Jackson, Lebron James, and Shia LaBeouf. I would get a time machine and travel back in time. I would pick up George Washington first, then Albert Einstein and then Michael Jackson. I would ask them each if they would like come over for dinner in the future. After I picked up all the people who had died already, I would go to get Lebron James. I would travel to his house and invite him to come to dinner with the other three famous people. I would do the same to Shia LaBeouf to invite him too.

One of the most unhealthy diets in the world is that of an American. It is made up of processed foods and a good amount of television. America easily has the most fast food restaurants in the entire world. Leave it to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King or any other fast-food restaurant to serve extremely cheap and even unhealthier food at any time during the day or night. ”It tastes good so why not?” That seems to be the question many people are asking now-a-days. Because it is so easily accessible and processed, it is made to be very tasty and extremely unhealthy. Many Americans find his or herself indulging on the these fatty foods of America on a day-to-day basis. While it may taste good at the time, it has a terrible effect on your body

Because of parents using food as a reward, many children learn that being good means eating unhealthy. Combined with the advertising techniques used by the fast food industry, children begin to make a correlation between fast food and a reward. Ellen Gustafson further confirms that fast food contains “more refined grains, fats and oils and sugars than the 1980’s.” All of these components of fast food make it appealing to children. Furthermore, many parents do not have time to make healthy meals for their children because of our fast-paced society. As David Zinczenko relates in Don’t Blame the Eater, “lunch and dinner, for me, was a daily choice between McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Pizza Hut. Then, as now, these were the only available options for an American kid to get an affordable meal.” This is not a rare situation. Many parents work long hours and therefore encourage their kids to eat fast food instead of taking the time to teach healthy habits. This has the ripple effect of overeating and lack of exercise. Without exercise, many kids gain weight, become obese or are at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and asthma. (Childhood Obesity) Today, type 2 diabetes exists in 30% of childhood obesity. (Zinczenko 154) Gustafson further states in her presentation “1/3 of American children are overweight and obese.” When a child has obesity, their ability to participate in everyday activities like sports and play is inhibited, which means

Many people in America believe that we should eat healthier foods. However, a large portion of the advertising created for food in America is focused on unhealthy foods and products, many of which are nutritionally poor and easily accessible to much of the population. This results in a contradictory ideal towards improvement of health, where individuals will constantly eat unhealthy foods and struggle to lose the weight that they will knowingly gain. If people in the modern American society were to focus more on consuming organic foods and products, people would be healthier, reducing high medical costs and improving the overall well-being of Americans. The benefits of organic foods should also be introduced to children in schools so they

Would you like to have no decisions on the healthiness of your food, and being able to only eat fast food, fried foods, etc. Most people would say no and rightfully so, people should be able to have choices on the foods they want to eat whether it’s healthy, unhealthy, fast food, farm grown, we shouldn’t have only unhealthy foods for our choices of what we eat. In the film Food Inc. directed by Robert Kenner there is a part in the movie that talks about the food choices of consumers. A point that was talked about for a decent amount of time in this part was how healthier foods are more expensive than fast food. This stood out to me because it’s true it cost more to eat healthy than it does to just go through a drive through. This is outrageous it should be the opposite, we should have to spend more for fast food than healthy foods. While at most fast food places there are ways you can eat healthy food but it is still more expensive than just buying a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets. During this part of the film a family was talking and saying that they have to choose whether to eat healthier food or get there father/husbands medicine so he could work. A family has to choose between those to things and that is not fair to anyone that has to make that decision. The family wanted to have better food and to not always be eating fast food meals but they don’t really have a choice and that is heartbreaking to see.

If one continually eats unhealthy foods, they can quickly become overweight. Moreover, this has become such a recurring problem in America that according to the National Institutes of Health, compulsive eating has led to obesity for approximately 35.7% of Americans. This number represents over one-third of the entire U.S population and will continue to grow unless it is addressed. In addition, it is critical that Americans learn to moderate their junk food intake to prevent the contraction of serious health issues. Sweenie states that, “Food high in salt, sugar, fat or calories and low nutrient content...provide suboptimal nutrition with excessive fat, sugar, or sodium per kcal. Such poor diets can slow growth, promote obesity; sow the seeds of diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiac problems, and osteoporosis.” These are exceptionally serious diseases that can often result in a severely hindered lifestyle or even death. In order to avoid these exceptionally undesirable outcomes, one must always remain aware of their daily junk food consumption. In Kirkey’s article, Paul Kenny, an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, states that, "It's incumbent upon people to make sure that they're more respectful and aware of what they're eating. Just be aware that there are dangers and risks associated. Enjoy (high-fat) food, but make sure it's occasionally and

The age old saying, “You are what you eat” still rings true today. Fresh fruit and vegetables have been replaced by french-fries and hamburgers. Children today do not know how to eat healthy. We, as a nation, spend hours and hours bombarding children with fast food commercials, sugary cereal commercials and cavity causing drink commercials. We than spend a fraction of that time telling kids these things are healthy only in moderation.

Over the past 50 years, the way we eat has changed more than it had in the previous 10,000. Now, 60% of Americans over the age of 20 are overweight. The fast-food industry is highly responsible for today’s health epidemic. Some people choose to blame the government for not balancing individual rights, and the common good. However, the government is not forcing you to eat. You put yourself at risk of diet related health problems.

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to consider that people just might eat healthier if they simply had the money to do so? It would be interesting to consider that the people who usually have bad eating habits, are the ones who actually can’t afford to eat healthy. America has the highest obesity rate in the world, but who knows where we could be if the healthy food was more affordable and the junk food wasn’t reasonably cheap. Illnesses and diseases have become common too in people, many that come from just unhealthy eating that has taken a negative toll on the body. Not to mention, people living in low-income areas where in those areas, the main thing around them are fast food restaurants. The promotion of healthier eating and a healthier lifestyle, though, isn’t completely hidden from the public, though more ads about tasty junk food are on televisions, billboards, and so on, more than food that will benefit your body and general health. These things are all played into the fact that people already have a terrible diet, and the prices of foods that can make someone’s diet healthier are too high for most to even include them in their diet regularly. Healthier foods should cost less because it can help lower the high obesity rate in America, it will promote a healthier lifestyle to people to do things like exercise more, and it can help prevent life-threatening illnesses caused by unhealthy eating.

Food is not as simple as it seems. Once Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are”. We, as human been should pay attention to what we eat because it will be reflected in the future. A lot of times we know if someone eats healthy by just seeing them, because physically they do not have a good body, healthy skin, or something like that. As we already said more than 50% of USA’s population eats fast food for many reasons: economy, quick service, etc., but the real problem come when we consider health. If People should care more about what they eat and try to avoid fast food, then they will have less possibility of diseases like high cholesterol, obesity, or cardiovascular issues and heart diseases.

The junk food we love can be so harmful to our beautiful bodies. Do you really think people make good decisions in choosing what they want to eat? Men, women and even children know the difference in foods which can affect one’s health. With no hesitation an individual will daringly eat a food without knowing the calories taken within that one burger. Within the 70’s till our generation now a person will see an image or hear someone say you will win an award for eating a 19,900 calorie burger, way more calories consumed than is supposed to. As years go by the portions of the food goes up such as the prices. Our generation needs to take consideration in our health because what we consume now, can affect us majorly in the future. 18-26 year olds have to be the ones to change what is consumed in their daily lifestyles.