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TOPIC:
"Junk Food – A Deadly Path"
What is “junk” food, anyway? You hear the word everywhere, but what is it really and why is it bad for us?
First of all, junk food is a slang term for foods that have little or no nutritional value or contain “empty” calories. This means that they may taste great but the only thing they are doing for your body is loading it up with deadly combinations of sugar, salt and fat.
Junk foods generally don’t contain the protein, vitamins or minerals that your body needs to fuel itself, repair daily wear and tear, fight free radical damage and give you the energy and vitality to do your daily tasks.
These “foods” don’t have anything in them that’s good for your body, hence the name “empty” calories.
So what, you say, I’ll get my vitamins somewhere else. Somewhere else usually gets forgotten about. The real problem with the poor health of today’s society is that an increasingly large percentage of all food we consume is really junk food.
Very few people are concerned about what they’re putting in their mouths until the years go by and it seems that “suddenly” your body begins to break down and all sorts of ailments mysteriously raise their ugly heads. When you stop to think about it, there was really nothing sudden or mysterious about it.
Most of us start down the junk food road before we’re even out of the womb and huge numbers of babies taste their first French fries before they’re even one year old.
There is way too much sugar, salt and fat in most every processed food you find on the shelf and when you start your children off with high sugar and salt foods, they will crave more and more of them and refuse to eat anything else.
On the other hand, when you don’t have high sugar and salt items in your home and you buy healthy alternatives, your children will never develop a taste for junk food.
It can’t be stressed enough that you are what you eat, and your children are what you train them to eat at an early age, and they train their children, who train their children, who train their children . .. you get the idea.
Parents, relatives, teachers, mentors and all those included in the sphere of a child’s influence need to realize that you have a great deal of power when it comes to the health of your children both now and in the future. What you teach your children will be passed on to their children and this absolutely includes what you teach them to eat.
Many parents say that they have no control when their children clamor
for junk food because they see it advertised on TV all day long and it’s in the vending machines in their schools and all their friends are eating it.
In fact, parents have total control, but often choose not to exercise it.
Every time you cave in to pressure from your children who saw that box of sugary cereal
advertised on TV (and some advertising campaigns are targeting children as young as 2), or the “happy meal” with the super-sized fries, you’re really saying that you don’t care about your children’s present or future health.
Teach them good eating habits early on so that they’ll be around for a lifetime.
First of all, your new baby isn’t running to the corner store to buy candy bars and potato chips. You are totally in control of what goes in its mouth. When you refuse to feed your baby junk food, guess what . . . your baby won’t grow up with a taste for junk food. When your cupboards aren’t filled with junk food, guess what . . . your children won’t be eating junk food.
But what about when they go to friend’s houses, you say? Of course you won’t have any control here, but if you start them off right and don’t allow them to eat a steady diet of junk food as they are growing up, chances are they will choose not to when they are out of your sight. This means you will have done your best to turn the tables on our country’s obesity and heart disease epidemic.
Talk to your children about marketing tactics in TV commercials. They may not understand it fully, but they will understand the basics. Tell them that most every “food” product they see
advertised on the TV is junk food and is bad for them because it has little or no nutritional value and is made up of high amounts of salt, sugar and fat which will make them fat and sick in later life.
Explain to your children that only large companies with lots of money can afford to
advertise on TV and only these large companies have the money to make us believe that what they
advertise is something we should eat.
For instance, last year McDonald’s spent
almost $74 million on food advertising just in the UK! How much did they spend in North America? A New York University study found that the food and drug industries spend $13 billion a year marketing to American children.
Tell your children that big companies are very clever when it comes to marketing their junk food to children and adults, too. Talk to them about the unethical ways these large companies draw in young children with bribes, such as collectible toys.
The World Health Organization has now identified being overweight as a global problem, with more than 300 million people obese. And the obesity crisis has happened in a fairly short period of time over the space of just a single generation. We are literally eating ourselves to death.
Sure big business is very much a player when it comes to our health because they make it so convenient, tempting and affordable, but don’t expect much help from that arena, because the junk food industry is just making too much money, while 2/3rds of our population needs to shed pounds.
For instance, did you know that Coca-Cola increased its sales by 7 per cent in 2001 when it teamed up with Warner to promote the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?
And do you know that one in 5 children are overweight and one in 25 is now considered to be not just overweight, but actually obese?
A big junk food offender is the soda industry and McDonald's is one of the worst junk food pushers.
And now McDonald’s has teamed up with international singing superstar, Justin Timberlake, on his 19-city tour putting the message out there loud and clear in the minds of today’s pre-teens, teens and young adults with the three little words “I’m lovin’ it”.
Unfortunately all these millions who are “lovin’ it” now are well on their way to growing into adults and becoming another generation that died prematurely because of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and heart disease related illnesses due to a lifetime of eating the wrong foods.
Yes, the junk food industry is big and powerful, and out there in your face everywhere you turn, but there is good news in all this, because ultimately YOU are still in control. It’s you who makes the choice to eat junk food and buy it for your children, or not.
Here’s an interesting quote from Sir John Krebs, chairman of the Food Standards Agency in Britain, who says,
“If nothing is done to stop the (junk food) trend, for the first time in 100 years life expectancy will actually go down.”
So how do we stop the trend? Simple . . . when you stop buying the junk food the big manufacturers will stop making it.
The bottom line is what you choose to eat now and what you feed your children now will determine your health and the health of your children in their adult years.
You and your children most definitely ARE what you eat and if you choose the junk food road, then the future of your health will most likely be one of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and a whole new generation of unhealthy adults looking for someone to sue for the cause of their unhappy, shortened lives.
Dietary habits begin at home and if you think about it, I’m sure that you would never intentionally play a part that leads up to holding your adult child’s hand once they’ve left home and have ended up in the clinic of the local bariatric surgeon, who for several thousand dollars will perform a gastric bypass operation which ensures rapid weight loss for at least three months.
Likely you’re not thinking about gastric bypass surgery when you’re feeding your baby a cracker loaded with trans fat or taking your child to hamburger haven, but this is the start down that very dangerous and unhealthy junk food path.
So what foods are considered “junk”? Generally speaking, all pre-packaged, bagged, boxed, bottled and salted snack foods and pure junk.
Items like potato chips, cheezies, popcorn, corn chips, pretzels, beer nuts, candy, gum, sweet desserts, doughnuts, pre-packaged microwave foods, fried fast foods, pizzas, hamburgers, fries, onion rings and carbonated beverages are some of the most dangerous and easily found junk foods.
When you’re ready to stop shortening your life by feeding yourself junk food and training your children to do the same, you need to
start reading labels.
A simple rule of thumb when reading labels is when sugar, fat or salt are one of the first three ingredients, you can be fairly confident that the package in your hand falls under the category of “junk” food, so leave it on the shelf.
You have the power to end the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease related illnesses simply by the diet choices you make for yourself and your children today.
Until then, there really is no surprise when you or those you care about seem to “suddenly” be struck down with a stroke, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. when so many are setting themselves up for this “sudden” occurrence all their lives with their daily poor food choices.
High blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, heart disease and related problems are not the inevitable products of aging, but they definitely ARE the inevitable outcome of walking the junk food road.
Ultimately, it’s your choice whether or not you let bad eating habits decide your future and the future of those you love.
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