How Unhealthy Foods Affect People - Essay Example

? How Unhealthy Foods Affect People Introduction FOOD PREDICTION SAFEWAY FOOD MAXIMUM FARMERS MARKET Kales $0.25 $1b plenty $160 Bananas $0.375 $1 for 3 Plenty $240 Broccoli $ 0.625 $1 per bag plenty $320 per carton Eggplant $0.75 $1 per bag plenty $320 per carton spinach $0.25 $1b plenty $160 per film bag squash $1.5 $1 per bag plenty $320 per film bag Many people tend to have unhealthy and poor eating habits. This majorly affect the youth who tend to go for fast foods hence they end up buying junk food or food that does not add nutrients to the body. Other people affected by this habit are those working 12 hours a day. This leaves them no or little time for preparing healthy foods. As a result, they end up in various fast food joints and instead of buying healthy food, they consume junk food. For instance, many prefer pizza and French fries as is evidenced in the video in dollar menu. A healthy diet can help prevent cancer, since up to 60% of cancer diseases are diet-related. In addition to that, healthy foods prevent deposition of fatty acids in the body, thus reducing weight and obesity. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, almost 100 million Americans are obese. Obesity results from, among other factors, unhealthy eating habits. This condition increases the risk of diseases such as hypertension, stroke, type two diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, sleep apnea as well as osteoarthritis. The foods we eat greatly influence how you feel and our appearance, and they can affect our health. Healthy foods consist of a variety of nutrients that is essential for the body’s normal functioning. These nutrients include vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates and proteins, each of which has a critical role in body maintenance and functioning. Vitamins like A, D, E, K, C and B present in various foods boost people’s immunity thus preventing a variety of illnesses(Haugen & Musser, 2012). Minerals present in food are also essential for prevention of deficiency diseases as well as maintaining the electrolyte balance in the body. This means that consumption of foods with little or none of these elements can render one’s life span shortened. Another downside of eating unhealthy foods like fast foods on a regular basis is that one develops an increased appetite. This can lead one to suffer from splurge eating, which is far from healthy especially since the foods have few nutrients and very low on calories. This makes them unable to contain hunger for a long time thus one craves for more food at an unusually fast rate (Haugen & Musser, 2012). This can only mean acquisition of more negative side effects of fast foods and unhealthy diet in general. The main target group affected here are teenagers who are conformed by television life, career women who have no time to prepare healthy foods and unmarried men who generally hate cooking. As a solution to this problem, the public can be sensitized and made aware of the dangers of unhealthy eating habits. This can be achieved through announcements and talk shows via the media to emphasize the importance of eating healthy foods. This is effective as almost all age groups at some point are exposed to some form of media. Parents must also be encouraged to find a way of talking to their children about good eating habits and hire somebody, if they are busy, to cook healthy foods to their children as opposed to ordering in fast foods. Manufacturers of fast foods must also be made to care about the effect of their services to humanity and not just about the amount of money they will make. If possible they should make foods that are healthier than the cholesterol filled foods they currently make. The evidence on the efficacy of most of these approaches, however, is inconclusive. The federal government has supported Agriculture for a long time. The Morrill Act of 1862 which assisted in the establishment of the land-grant colleges was the first subsidy program for Agriculture (Thelin et. al., 2013). Following this was the Hatch Act of 1887 responsible for funding research in agriculture. Other subsidy programs include the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 responsible for agricultural education and the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 which provided cooperative “land banks” that offered loans to farmers. With time, this evolved to present day’s Farm Credit System. This system consists of a network of financial cooperatives covering 50 states and assets totalling to $90 billion. By 1920s, federal agricultural subsidies had not gained popularity. The USDA’s main focus was on statistics production, research funding, and pest infestations responses among others. However, the need for subsidies by farmers increased. In 1929 the Federal Farm Board was created by the Agricultural Marketing Act (Thelin et. al., 2013). This board’s function was to raise prices of commodity through stockpiling production. However, its efforts failed and it was dismantled 1933. The USDA has been known to encourage, either directly or indirectly, unhealthy food production. These unhealthy foods have been linked to diseases that have undergone a steady increase with time. The subsidy system has time and again supported commodity crop producers financially (Thelin et. al., 2013). The subsidy program undergoes reviews after every five years. Examples of commodity crops that have benefited from this subsidy include wheat, corn, soybeans, rice and cotton and other non perishable crops. Obesity has a health risk of about 20% and this depends on the severity of the condition. This has been obtained from life insurance tables. Insulin resistance and diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, low high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol, hypertriglyceridemia, and high total-and low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol are some of the risks involved in obesity cases. Other effects include mortality from cancer of the endometrium in women and colorectal cancer in men. The list of conditions that increase with obesity is endless, adding sleep apnea, chronic hypoxia and hypercapnia, gout, and degenerative joint disease (Haugen & Musser, 2012). How fat is distributed in the body directly relates to these health risks. Two forms of obesity exist, depending on location of fatty acid deposits. Of the two, abdominal obesity is more deadly than gluteal-femoral obesity. Intake of food highly depends on social influences. This means that one’s eating habit is affected, either consciously or subconsciously, either directly or indirectly, by the eating habits of others around him or her. This holds true even when one is eating in the absence of others provided he or she has interacted with others before. The more people one eats with, the more food they consume according to research, especially when the company is friends or family. Gender, culture, age, social and community networks as well as environment are some of the factors that affect the poor health and socio-economic status of many people. Other factors included here are the health behaviour of a person together with the individual’s lifestyle. There exist differences in social classes based on food intake and nutrients. This is according to various population studies. To elaborate on this point, poor people, earning low income find it difficult to balance their diets, hardly eating fruits (Mahan & Escott-Stump, 2008). This leads to both over and under-nutrition in the society. The former refers to excessive energy consumption which results in obesity while the latter implies deficiency in micronutrients. The same studies suggest that the poor are at a higher chance of contracting chronic diseases earlier than the well-off. Low-income earners, as discussed above, often find difficulty in obtaining a balanced diet, thus suffer from food poverty and insecurity. Factors such as cost, knowledge and accessibility have been outlined to be some of the major causes of food poverty by low income earners. As a result of this, there has been development of food deserts. Low income earners have limited knowledge of appropriate cooking methods and facilities in addition to the lack of money (Mahan & Escott-Stump, 2008). Being poor limit one to a lot of things, including inability to afford transport in order to access healthy foods. There is confusing information on diet and eating habits today that leave people helpless instead of satisfied. This ends up causing more harm than good especially as many people are ignorant of healthy eating habits. Not everyone has the ability to purchase ingredients and equipment for cooking experiments, and this only makes matters worse (Haugen & Musser, 2012) From this paper, it is clear that food choices and eating habits are determined majorly by rate of income and level of knowledge one has. Wise choices tend to reduce risks of getting diet-related diseases. This calls for a total change in attitude and lifestyle, if good health and subsequent long life span is anything to go by. A multidisciplinary approach to should be embraced in an attempt to improving health inequalities. Apart from individual preferences, social, economic and cultural factors also affect people’s choices in food and eating habits. This process requires the efforts of the whole community, and starts with an individual. If these considerations are put into place, then it will be a start of the long journey that will bring America back to health. References Haugen, D. M., & Musser, S. (2012). Nutrition Detroit: Greenhaven Press/Gale Cengage Learning Mahan, L. K., & Escott-Stump, S. (2008). Krause's food & nutrition therapy St. Louis, Mo: Saunders/Elsevier. Thelin J., Edwards J., & Moyen E. (2013) Higher Education in the United States- Historical Development System State University Educational Encyclopaedia Retrieved 5 November, 2013 from education.stateuniversity.com Read More