Introduction
"Would you like some fries with this, sir?" is exactly what you hear at any McDonald's restaurant you can come by. You order a burger, plus they provide you their crispy, yummy, juicy, famous French fries. The human brain is letting you know to take it, but your heart is telling you to stop because it can hardly inhale and exhale anymore. People, with their busy schedules, go to junk food restaurants day-to-day without thinking if it's smart to eat there or not. It is cheaper and faster than other restaurants but the food is bad for anyone's health. Despite its convenience, junk food can be quite dangerous to us over time, which is why we should be aware of the risks and effects so it can provide us so we can live a wholesome lifestyle.
One problem is the growing quantity of fast food restaurants and their advertising. We find them everywhere; on the highway, on taxis and buses, on billboards, on buildings and other places. Also, we need not go to their restaurants to get their food because they will have their delivery hotlines. It does increase the number of people eating fast food because most people enjoy it better when their food comes to them rather than the harder, traditional way of sitting down and eating at a restaurant.
Another problem with fast food restaurants is that it's very addictive. Once we eat there, we want more of it because it is so cheap, yummy and filling up. Living near by a fast food restaurant doesn't help either because we would want to eat there more. It will be the first place we'll think about whenever we get hungry. It'll be a good hangout place also with the wireless internet routers put into the area.
Lastly, fast food restaurants provide us food with food content that provides us very little wholesome content. They use really cheap ingredients which will make fast food contain high levels of sodium, cholesterol, fats and calorie consumption which can cause certain diseases like excess weight, high blood pressure, and other center diseases.
Fast Food Restaurants and Advertisements
We don't have time to get ready a meal with the active schedules we're given now, we think it's easier to eat at an easy food restaurant instead and we just forget about eating healthy. Junk food is getting more popular as we know it, bringing on the development of the junk food industry. As they get bigger, more folks will come to consume at their restaurants. Now with their delivery hotline, people can just make an effort to call their amounts and the meals will be sent to their doorstep after half an hour. With an instant drive-thru, you get your meal in under a quarter-hour or less! They make everything easier and faster for all of us because they know that that's what the clients want. We also see so many adverts all around us, whether we are in home or on the highway. The advertising are on the air, on billboards, on the internet, in magazines, and in mags. It's as though they're dialling out to us and adding the idea inside our heads to consume their food at their nearest restaurant at the earliest opportunity. They provide us easy to keep in mind numbers so that we can call them anytime and anywhere without having to look at the directory book. Most junk food restaurants are now open 24/7 so we can drop by or call them anytime we want. Because it's so easy, we get so used to eating at junk food restaurants that people won't need to take a look at their selections to know very well what we want. This just shows us that eating there may be more of a program for us now. At about three in the afternoon, we get famished and the very first thing that pops up in our mind is "I'm craving for McDonald's Fowl McNuggets right now, with fries and an Apple pie!" What most people don't realize is the fact that eating too much of it's very dangerous for all of us because we have no idea of this content.
Fast Food Addiction
Bringing young children to fast food restaurants for breakfast is an awful decision to make because the child can get dependent on the flavour and flavour of the meals. Once the child gets dependent on it, he or she will not stop requesting more. The idea that junk food is better than other food will be implanted to their heads and they will get addicted even until adulthood. It is better to make children practice eating more nutritious food such as fruits and vegetables.
Studies have shown that junk food is really as addicting as drugs. Scientists made an test out rats and exactly how they reacted to the fast food the scientists offered them. The rats that have been given the junk food became obese and addicted to it. Professor Paul H. Kenny, who works as a professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, mentioned that the rats' brains were used to consuming food that was highly pleasurable that it could not go for other things or do other things but eat the meals directed at them. The rats would disregard electric shocks merely to eat the meals (Greviskes).
Fast food, like drugs, can result in addiction, thus, a person dependent on fast food will have to endure the consequences. The more we consume fast food, a lot more we will get addicted. We will choose to consume only junk food and nothing at all else. Children at a age, when given junk food, gets used to eating junk food. If they do, they could get obese when they aren't given a balanced diet.
Food Content
Fast food can make us very full even at an inexpensive price. The reason for this is because fast food restaurants use cheap ingredients because of their food that have high amounts of sodium, cholesterol, calories from fat and excessive fat (Children's Hospital Boston).
There are a great deal of uses for sodium. It could be used to protect food, boost its flavour, and also to prevent the progress of pathogens. But sodium can cause very dangerous effects if one uses too much of it. It can give us a rise in blood circulation pressure and a high risk of center diseases. Based on the American Heart Connection, it's best if one restricts their sodium intake to less than 1, 500 mg of sodium per day (American Heart Relationship, Inc. ). The meals on the McDonald's menu with the best sodium content is the McDonald's Spanish Omelet Bagel with a sodium content of 1570 mg (Fast Food. com). That's more than the sodium intake one must consume per day within a bagel.
Fats, with the right amount, are good because it continues us warm and cushions our organs within our body. Some fatty acids are essential to your body because they are used up for energy and become part of our body chemicals, such as hormones. Fats are categorised into two types: saturated fats and unsaturated fat. Unsaturated fats are found only in flower products while fats are found in dog products. Another name for saturated extra fat is cholesterol. Cholesterol helps your body absorb what we are in need of, although too much cholesterol is also bad for our body. It can cause heart diseases and osteoporosis because it can thin the bones (Berkoff 124).
Calories are released in the digestion and absorption of food. Some food and beverages contain calories. We have to not be concerned about if there are energy in food or not, but how much energy food has. The advised calorie intake on a daily basis for us is 2000 calories from fat. Fast food is filled with very high amounts of calories that one breakfast meal can have up to 1000 energy. That's one half the calorie consumption you may take up in a day.
Obesity
Fast food can cause us a lot of bad diseases like overweight and high blood circulation pressure. Being obese does not only lower our self-esteem, additionally, it may increase dangers of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, heart stroke, arthritis, diabetes plus some types of tumor.
Statistics show that more than 190 million in the American inhabitants are obese and the diseases that are related with over weight costs 147 billion dollars yearly (Doane). Plainly, something has to be done relating to this, and not only in America. We should be very alert to the food we consume and the things we do. One of the ways is to not make eating junk food a routine for us by thinking about the possible consequences it can give us. Smart to prevent weight problems is to maintain a wholesome lifestyle and exercise daily to use up the energy that people consume.
One child struggling with obesity explained that "she started out increasing weight when her family started out buying cheaper foods" (Doane). She observed that she became obese when they began to budget their food and to get cheaper food instead, specifically, food from junk food restaurants. However, over weight can be averted, and that begins with the choice of food we consume every day. There are a great number of better foods that are much healthier and more wholesome than junk food. All it requires for us to do is to get accustomed to a healthy diet plan.
Diabetes
Diabetes is a disease wherein you can find too much sugars in the bloodstream. It is brought on by lack of insulin in our body. Insulin is released by our pancreas and it is utilized to maintain blood glucose. The most common kind of diabetes is Type 2 Diabetes. It really is brought on by too much over weight and having less exercise. While using growing volume of fast food restaurants across the world, there is a risky for obesity in our society.
Most people take in fast food because they do not have the time to prepare food for themselves, or just simply do not trouble at all. They are really placing themselves at an increased risk of weight problems and diabetes, or worse, loss of life.
Statistics show that 7. 8% of the population in the United States have diabetes. In 2006, Diabetes was one of the highest causes of fatality in the United States. 233, 619 people passed on because of diabetes in 2005 (Centers for Disease Control and Elimination).
Fast Food Nation
From e book to movie, publisher Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was a hit. Schlosser could go in to the crops and the factories where in fact the meats used by fast food joints are made. He observed that a lot of factors leading to food borne conditions from fast food restaurants start at these plants and factories. Factors like the procedure of cutting meat, treatment of cattle, and the utilization of chemicals to trick our minds to consume junk food.
Everything that goes into our stomachs should be treated with the most care since it is the gasoline that drives us to be healthy and also have enough energy. However, the procedure that cattle get from the factories and crops is horrendous. They are given small, congested space to live in, and are hardly cared for. Besides that, they are fed the remains of dead pigs, horses and chicken, metal fragments, observed dust, and cattle blood vessels (Stacel). Nourishing these to the cattle can make them weak and will make them lose wholesome content. Some health issues will begin to develop in them, and therefore instances of food borne ailments take place. If the cattle are "ready", they are required to walk to where they are going to be slaughtered. The cattle which are too poor to walk are then going to be found by forklifts (Stacel).
While employees in plants are required to slaughter 175 cattle per hour twenty years earlier, workers today are now necessary to slaughter 400 cattle each hour. Because of this, the workers have a tendency to be less careful in slaughtering the cattle. This causes mishaps like limbs of the staff getting confusing and processed into what customers think are just cow meat. Not merely limbs get blended into the meat, but also the external wastes of the cattle because staff who aren't careful enough inadvertently slice the intestinal cords of the cattle (Stacel).
Fast food restaurants also work into tricking our intellects to buy their food (Stacel). They need us to feel that what we buy from them are healthy and fresh, as the truth is it is all old, inactive, and grubby. They use chemicals like food coloring in the meat to show customers that their bright red meat acquired just been slaughtered to allow them to buy, while other chemicals trick our noses. The smell that comes from food is often noticed or seen first before tasting. Focusing on how strong the smell of food can key our minds to eat, researchers made chemicals that imitate the smell that comes out of food. This is where the smell of junk food originates from, chemicals that want us to feel that whatever we are eating are real hamburgers or French fries made with real, fresh potatoes.
The movie Fast Food Nation is a documentary that will change someone's mind to stop eating junk food. People will realize how careless and ruthless the fast food industry works to market what they call food.
Avoiding Fast Food
When people are on the road, and are famished, they usually go to the nearest fast food restaurant but there are ways to avoid people in this type of situations from eating at a fast food restaurant. The easiest way is to bring along any small, lightweight and nourishing food that can be eaten inside a car. Foods like breads, sandwiches, or a banana are so more healthy and healthy than fast food and they are the perfect food that can be eaten in the car.
At home, when you don't feel the urge to cook, a simple and fast way to eat is to mix up together a simple salad yourself or your family. Instead of French fries, cooked potatoes are just as scrumptious and are healthier.
Conclusion
Eating fast food is a huge risk to your health since it can cause different conditions like diabetes and excess weight. Some individuals may say that eating fast food once in a while is not at all bad, but we have to still be careful and aware because eating fast food is addictive.
