Julia Crist 12/15/15
There are many things that we don’t realize about eating healthy, like the amount of fruits and vegetables that we are supposed to eat compared to the amount that we do eat. One study showed that only 20% of high school students reported eating five servings of vegetables a day. That is a shocking percentage. If you think about that in the grand scheme of things that is not that many people at all. More people need to be educated on the proper diet and nutrition habits. Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic in the United States, and partially because people just don’t know.
A lot of people have easy access in their own homes or just passing through a drive through on their way home to grab a sugary drink. We as a country need to realize that we are drinking our calories, those are called empty calories. If you were to however switch to diet soda or almost any form of diet drink there is a good chance that there is aspartame in it, a sugar substitute, which is known to cause cancer. On the hand added sugar like fructose and high fructose corn syrup have many empty calories, they have no nutritional value. These added sugars are a major health risk, they are the leading causes of, obesity, heart disease, and type two diabetes.
Another huge issue in nutrition today that people don’t pay enough attention to is processed trans fats. Trans fats are found in a lot of the snack foods that we enjoy like Oreos, chips, and macaroni and cheese. Eating an excessive amount of trans fats can lead to obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and can even cause depression. This kind of fat is the worst kind of fat because it is hydrogenated oil mixed with other chemicals to resemble saturated fats.
Many people think that taking supplements are good for you, however they cannot replace the nutritional value of eating clean and healthy. They can have some beneficial qualities like helping you gain the right amount of nutrients that you could be lacking in your everyday diet like, vitamin D and magnesium.
Diets have become huge things like Weight Watchers, juice diets, Jenny Craig, these may help you lose weight in the near future but not in the distant future. You can’t just diet and think that you solved the problem, you have to make a life style change, stop eating processed food and exercising more. Losing a lot of weight on a diet is good but keeping the weight off and staying healthy is hard when you stop the diet it’s easy for the weight to come back. You have to change the way you think about and see food, use it as fuel instead of entertainment.
