Healthy Nutritional Composition of Food - Essay Example

Other small Asian countries followed suit. The lifestyles of people have changed and people have taken to the consumption of junk/fast food which has resulted in deficiencies in the amount and nutritional composition of food. The popularity of junk and fast food grew to gigantic proportions and one such company, McDonalds, has about thirty-one thousand outlets all over the world (www.pearltrees...). Children are the target of publicity campaigns of the junk food manufacturers, through the print and electronic media. According to the report of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, these companies spent 4.2 billion dollars on a marketing blitz in 2010 (grist.org…). Junk food addicts are paying the price for their thoughtless approach to the consumption of food and suffer the consequences in the form of after-effects on their health conditions.

The reason is, in junk food the percentage of fat, sugar, calories, starch, and salt are in excessive proportion. Such categories of food have so many calories, and if one consumes junk food more than two times a week, the weight will steadily increase. According to a nutritionist, the junk food consumed once, is equivalent to the consumption of normal food three times, calorie-wise. “If current trends in the growth of obesity continue, total healthcare costs attributable to obesity could reach $861 to $957 billion by 2030, which would account for 16% to 18% of US health expenditures. …Adults among Americans aged 20 and older, 149.3 million are overweight or obese…Among children ages 2–19, about 1 in 3 is overweight and obese (www.heart.org...). Consumption of junk food not only increases weight but also affects the liver badly. The pizzas, burger, hot-dog, etc. damage the digestive tracts to such an extent, that the danger of being afflicted with diabetes are real. Now, even children suffer from heart attacks, the important contributing factor being junk food. It contains lipoprotein and cholesterol in excessive quantities which get accumulated in the inner walls of the blood vessels. Therefore to carry the flow of blood to the heart, the veins have to exert extra pressure. “One problem with junk foods is that they are low in satiation value -- that is, people do not tend to feel as full when they eat them -- which can lead to overeating. Another problem is that junk food tends to replace other, more nutritious foods (www.webmd.com...). You must have observed that lovers of junk food are generally inactive and lazy. To digest this food the digestive organs need more blood and enzymes. So the entire energy reaches out there. At the physical level, junk food causes immense harm, and evil results accrue on all counts.

The lifestyles of people have changed and people have taken to the consumption of junk/fast food which has resulted in deficiencies in the amount and nutritional composition of food. The sum and substance of the findings mentioned above is junk food is extremely harmful to our health. On doing physical exercises, the possibility of harmful effects can be reduced to some extent. If the junk food addicts cannot give it up altogether, the least expected of them is, they should do physical exercises and morning walks regularly.