Overall, fast food has no benefits at all. There is almost
no nutritional value, yet there are so many negative effects. Why do we still
eat these foods, even though we know that there is no positive outcome to
eating them? Because once we eat it that first time, we become addicted.
Eventually, our bodies cannot function properly without getting these foods.
The video in this blog post includes clips from “Super Size Me,” a documentary
that took place in 2004 featuring Morgan Spurlock. In this film, Morgan eats
fast food for every meal for thirty days straight. This documentary shows what
happens to his body both physically and physiologically as well as describing
the harm that his body has been put through. The information brought forth
throughout this blog includes many proven facts and statistics that show how
dangerous fast food can be. Clearly, there is no positive outcome to eating
these foods, but only an outcome that is damaging to our health system. Due to
its addictiveness, the only way to protect ourselves from the risks fast food
endangers us of is to rid our diet of fast food completely. Yes, it may be convenient at times, but is
that worth obesity or even a heart disease? No it is not. Nothing is worth
putting our lives at risk of any type of disease or the possibility of death so
that we may feel pleasure for a few moments. To overcome this fast food
epidemic within our nation, we must rid ourselves completely of fast food.
Although it seems as though this will have no effect, the people around us will
begin to be influenced and a chain reaction will begin, resulting in a nation
with no fast food and healthy citizens.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Addictiveness of Fast Food
Whether fast food is addictive or not has been a controversial
argument in the past. However, researchers have recently discovered that there
are, in fact, many ingredients within the food that cause customers to become
addicted to it. According to the AOL That’s Fit section online, “researchers at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City showed that feeding rats a
diet high in saturated fat, calories and sugar – which is the typical make-up
for a fast-food menu item – lowered the rats ability to respond to leptin, a
hormone that helps regulate eating behavior by controlling how full one feels.
As rats grew fatter, the amount of leptin in their bodies increased signaling
that they were dangerously close to starvation. They continued to overeat and
gain weight.” This study was later proven to be true on humans as well. The
fact that consuming excessive amounts of fats, calories and sugars in a food
can cause us to still feel hungry explains why we gain weight when eating fast
foods. Our bodies eventually become addicted to fast food, yet while we eat it,
our body believes we are still hungry, which then causes over-eating and the
inability to stop ourselves from consuming the foods in front of us. Also, in
his newspaper article “Why Junk Food Really Is Addictive,” Ben Leach states
that, “It is time to stop blaming individuals for being overweight or obese.
The real problem is we have created a world where food is always available and
where that food is designed to make you want to eat more of it. For millions of
people, modern food is simply impossible to resist.” This statement is
extremely true. Many people say that it is the people’s fault for eating the
food, that we should all be deemed responsible for our weight gain. However, it
is difficult when the ingredients in the food are proven to be addictive to our
bodies. Overall, the addictive ingredients in fast food require our body to
crave it more often, eventually causing weight gain, obesity, diseases, or
other sicknesses that inflict harm upon our bodies.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Health Problems Caused by Fast Food
Due to the many unhealthy
ingredients in fast food products, problems have occurred in the body of
consumers that can do as much as threaten their life. The University of
Minnesota experimenters stated, “Many researchers now believe that many health
problems are partly related to diet. While they used to believe that diseases –
such as type II diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and certain cancers – were
caused by a single gene mutation, they are now generally attributing these
conditions to the food we eat. It is an important factor in that dysfunction,
in part because our diets lack the necessary balance of nutrients.” Basically,
these researchers are saying that excessive amounts of unhealthy foods can
result in extremely harmful, even deadly, diseases such as the ones mentioned
previously plus many others. It is unreal that just by consuming these foods,
one is putting their life in extreme danger of a disease, heart problem, or
possibly death. Obesity is another result of the excessive consumption of fast
food. Our human bodies are not able to handle the large amounts of fats,
sugars, and calories that are found in the products of a fast food restaurant.
Since they have nothing else to do with them, these unhealthy ingredients are
distributed into different parts of the body idly, and eventually turn into fat
and cause weight gain. If this continues to occur, the person will soon become
obese. Obesity is extremely dangerous and can even cause our lives to be
shortened. This evidence speaks for itself when showing how harmful fast foods
can be to our body.
Food Borne Illness
Food borne illnesses are becoming more and more common as
the fast food industry is growing. According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, some of the food borne illnesses include E. Coli, which can
cause illnesses such as pneumonia or even death; Rat-bite fever, which can be a
fatal disease; Salmonella, which can cause diarrhea and up to 72 hours of
cramps, and many more. In his novel explaining the dark side of the fast food
system, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes, “Every day in the United
States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are
hospitalized, and fourteen die. According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), more than a quarter of the American population suffers a
bout of food poisoning each year.” The numbers in these statistics are higher
than they should be for this specific topic. The fact that more than one fourth
of the citizens in our nation will suffer due to a foodborne illness and
fourteen innocent people will end up dead because of a food that has been
consumed should be completely unacceptable. When looking at these numbers, it
is obvious that there will always be a risk for a person that is consuming any
type of fast food, which should not be the case at all. Although it seems
impossible, there needs to be a way for everyone to be completely free of any
harm or risk of disease when it comes to the foods we are consuming.
Ingredients and How They Affect our Body
The ingredients in a fast food meal are one of the major
elements that cause fast foods to be unhealthy and harmful to our bodies and health.
When ordering a typical meal from one of these restaurants, most customers
believe that the ingredients in this meal might include items such as salt,
potatoes, beef, tomatoes, lettuce, bread, and sugar. What these customers don’t
know, however, is that these processed foods have additives within these
ingredients that help maintain freshness and allow the foods to be more
appealing. A few of these additives are Xanthan gum, a thickening agent found
in most foods; emulsifiers, a product that allows multiple liquids to mix
together when they normally wouldn’t be able to; color dye, which enhances the
color and appearance of many food products; and high-fructose corn syrup, a
sweetener that has almost no nutritional value and is extremely high in calories.
As one may see, fast foods have ingredients that prove these foods are highly
processed and almost fake. According to the Livestrong Foundation, a
professional health site that offers advisement on fitness, health, and
nutrition, “Many anti-obesity advocates believe that fast food is addictive due
to the immense amount of sugar, fat, salt and other processed ingredients each
serving of food contains.” Due to the fact that these ingredients appear in
large amounts within a fast food meal, the customers will eventually become
addicted to it. This will then cause the customer to continually eat fast foods
and insert these harmful products into their bodies.
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