Are we killing ourselves with food?

Too much of something can potentially cause the opposite effect. Food is our source of energy. It what makes our bodies strong and the source of energy, especially healthy food, we are meant to eat specific percentages of every nutrient every day, but we exceed in one category that’s why we go through obesity in this society. One day I was driving down one of the streets that is known for the number of restaurants in it. When I looked at the people going in the restaurants and the people going out of it, I would say 70% of the people were highly overweight. I wondered to myself, why are they hurting themselves, why are they walking themselves to that place instead of going to the gym and then end up having a really severe diseases and even sometimes -god forbid- death. Obesity is on the rise, what are we doing to fix it, or how can we fix it?

To begin with, Morgan Spurlock did a really brave challenge, he recorded a vlog as he was doing this challenge for a whole month of eating McDonald’s for all three meals, he did all diagnosis before and after, the things he went through are amazingly unbelievable, the change he felt in his body, and the laziness he felt was unbelievably unexpected, it’s a film that I recommend everyone to watch. I was that kind of person who did not care what they ate, I did not really pay attention to the daily values of nutrients my body needed. Until I took a nutrition class and watched the supersize me. It was a nightmare, I am an overweight person, but currently I am watching my diet after I took that nutrition class. Morgan Spurlock got highly effected during the making of his clip, he vomited a lot at first, then he felt as if he is sexually inactive and heavy most of the time. He then started worrying about his health, though he had to complete the challenge. I thought to myself, isn’t that what most of us Americans go through if we were overweight. It is a fact that too much sodium can cause severe headaches, also acnes are caused by carbohydrates, not to mention that there is a strong link between dairy and acne in the humans’ body. Also, heart diseases are caused by the increment of the blood in the Cholesterol. Not to mention that all kinds of disease are most likely to happen to overweight people. We tend to always take our bodies for granted, you could say it is a humans’ nature to be greedy. Some people even take their children’s bodies for granted, they feed them whatever junk food they want just so they don’t feel upset, this kind of kids tend to grow up to be very picky about the types of food that access their bodies, they tend to eat the weirdest foods because the normal food is not what their bodies are used to. Another thing is, “ Before 1994, diabetes in children was generally caused by a genetic disorder — only about 5 percent of childhood cases were obesity-related, or Type 2, diabetes. Today, according to the National Institutes of Health, Type 2 diabetes accounts for at least 30 percent of all the new childhood cases of diabetes in this country.” Another thing is, as we grow up, most us were not raised to learn how to cook for ourselves, we did not feed ourselves because our parents used to provide all of these things for us. As a result, we did not educate ourselves about the basics of nutrition our bodies truly need. We are most likely to increase the chances for our kids to have diabetes by letting them depend on us.

“ Just as the standard American diet is killing us individually – with skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other ills- …”. Obesity can begin at a very young age, that is why we have to be careful of what kind of food we feed our kids. Many children now in the United States are suffering from obesity and the diseases that comes with it, not only does it affect them physically, it can affect them emotionally and mentally, because they are most likely to feel insecure about themselves and how they look in front of people. For instant, having a cousin who is an overweight kid, who is about 11 years old who is like any other kid, likes to play around, but whenever he moves around everyone tells him to stop moving because he looks heavy moving around. It made me realize how kids change their behaviors psychologically because of how insecure they are. Now all he does is ask about how he can lose weight, even though kids his age should not worry about that, he feels like he cannot do anything because of his weight. It is so sad how these kids have a tendency to stop doing something that other kids his age normally do only because of the way they are being perceived by the society. Whom to blame? The kids or their parents? Most of the kids these days are just sitting around all day playing video games, not to mention how much they consume all the high fat and sugar snacks, but what is the solution? Let us start by giving kids less time on their video games, tv, and electronics in general, and more time for them to play outside like how they are supposed to as normal kids would. Parents are usually never aware that it is always their fault about what happens to their kids, or how their kids react in general to what life throws at them, it all comes down to how they were raised because kids are the parent’s biggest responsibility. So when you are on your way back from getting the kids back from school or a soccer practice, make them healthy snacks instead of getting them fast food to feed them, some parents do not have time to cook healthy snacks so they buy whatever there is junk food just their kids won’t stay hungry, but the truth is, the excuses are what makes are life less productive and it is what makes us have an unhealthy lifestyle. There is always time for the things we care about, and parents out there should take more responsibility for their kids’ lives to have a better and a healthier generation.

Especially because this generations biggest interest is not really their health but the social media world, so for kids to use social media is just a second step for them to reach out for fast food.

Marketing in the fast food field has a lot to do with the beauty experts and how much time and effort they put to make the food look desirable and its best on the menu for the people to buy, they hire food beauty experts to make their food look outstanding and delicious, which means, Digital marketing is really important in the fast food industry, especially because nowadays the entire world uses social media all the time, either to communicate, to waste time, or to start projects and make their own businesses online. People nowadays are attracted to what is on the screen to the point it is easy to deceive them. There are many ways the fast food industry uses social media for advertisements, for example, ads on Instagram application, accounts on snapchat, and even applications to order food, such as Talabat and hunger station in Arab countries, bite squad, and the restaurant’s application itself and many more in the united states, these types of applications notify you every other day to buy their food. Some other ways people are attracted to the advertisements is because some fast food restaurants have sales or promotions every other week, some even give coupons which makes the costumers feel as if they have to spend them, so they come again and even invite other friends and family members so they can win coupons like them .

Finally, many researchers and scientist are trying to find a solution for this problem. On of the solutions, which in my pinion sounds so realistic and believable is the Ketogenic diet, which was also used to treat epilepsy children. To better understand how keto genic works, we need to understand how our bodies work with burning fat. When exercising your body burn the carbohydrates that was stored in your body as a form of energy, so you can continue exercising without a problem, but with ketogenic, your body goes through ketosis which is a process in which the body runs out of carbohydrates to use and starts burning fats, including the body fat to get energy. Ketogenic is a high fat, low protein and very low to zero sugar kind of diet, in ketogenic you are not allowed to eat any form of carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and sugar, and sometimes you are allowed to eat vegetables only because they also contain carbohydrates. If society gave up drinking soda and gave up eating the carbohydrates that are not only fattening but also not healthy for you, we would all live a healthy life. “ Traditionally, the ketogenic diet has been reserved as a “ last treatment option” after establishment of medical intractability. In one study, 5 patients were referred for the diet after failing ≥6 medications on average.”, it is really popular in hospitals, because not only it cured many diseases that sugar caused, also researchers say that cancer cells feed on sugar. I personally tried the ketogenic for six weeks, couple of days later my body felt really light, and after three weeks my face felt a lot clearer because sugar caused acne too. Ketogenic is a diet that all celebrities are trying now, and we are seeing progress, a diet that everyone recommends.

In conclusion obesity is a problem that is not necessarily critical and it can be fixed with patience, it needs a strong well. For parents they need to think about their children because our food systems are not maintainable, and we got distracted from all the nice advertisements on tv that makes us drool and wanting to get it. We need to watch what eat because we need to live a healthy life for ourselves.