...How Junk Food Affects Children Frendester Shanna Williams DeVry University How Junk Food Affects Children It is getting late as a busy mother of three, wife, and nurse is rushing to pick up her kids and head to softball practice. Its thirty minutes until the oldest child is expected to be on the field. The kids are crying and screaming that they are hungry. What is the mother to do? McDonalds bails her out again. The kids get a quick, hot, and fun meal. This mother doesn’t have to face the challenge of balancing work and life situations, especially cooking a dinner. All may seem at ease, but let’s reveal what is really at stake here. Once at softball practice the mother notices that her child is lagging behind during drills, becoming agitated, and is easily fatigued. She also notices that her child is not as lean as the other girls. The other children seem to be running circles around her child. It seems that her child is continuing to become more and more behind the expectations of her team at each practice. What is wrong? She does some research and is quickly taken by surprise. A diet comprised of an increased intake of sugars, sodium, and additives has numerous repercussions. “However, the potential negative psychosocial aspects of obesity, such as poor body image (BI), social isolation, and stigmatization, are also relevant in the lives of youth” (Martin, 2011, p.245). Parents and other youth leaders are strongly encouraged to be the defense against such harsh ramifications...
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...Junk Food In the essay “How Science Supports Junk Food Addiction,” the author, Cynthia Andrzejczyk, explains junk food companies’ efforts to perfect the taste of their foods and create an addiction for their products. In 1999, a meeting between the biggest junk food companies took place to discuss the problem of obesity in America. Despite the severity of the problem, Stephen Sanger, the CEO of General Mills, stated that his companies worry “was not about good nutrition; it was about what tasted good” (qtd. In Andrzejczyk 375). This statement ended all efforts to make food healthier. When it comes to taste, junk food companies have it down to a science. Junk food companies have hired specialists to increase the desirability of certain foods. One of these specialists is Howard Moscowitz, a Harvard graduate with a degree in Experimental Psychology (Andrzejczyk 375). Moscowitz’s main goal is getting certain foods to their maximum “optimization” and “bliss point”” (Andrzejczyk 375). The “bliss point” of a food is the best version of itself. This bliss point is normally the culprit for fast food addiction. It gets you to the point where you need to eat more because it tastes so good. Potato chips are deemed as the “perfect junk food” (Andrzejczyk 375 . However one of the biggest issues, associated with potato chips, was people deemed them unhealthy. In 1957, potato chip sales were dropping off. Ernest Dichter, a psychologist, found that the reason for this drop off was that...
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...Thesis statement: Can junk food addiction be called a bad habit, such as smoking in the modern society? Supporting points: 1) What is junk food? Categories of junk food. 2) Statistics about fast-food. Health problems fast food can cause. 3) Why are people still visiting fast-food places if fast-food is often blamed for the poor health of many people? Everyday millions of people get addicted to junk food. These are people who do not have enough time, children, or those who find it affordable to eat in fast food places because of the low prices there. The junk food can be classified in few categories - snacks, fast food, and soft drinks. The first category are the snacks, which are being brought everyday by millions of people who are not concerned about how unhealthy it is and care only about the taste. The products from the fast food restaurants such as hamburgers are the second category. A person will buy a hamburger because it is very good in taste but he or she does not consider what really is inside this "meal" and how those ingredients might harm his or her health. It is hardly possible to pass McDonalds nowadays without stopping there and having a hamburger with a big Coke. Soft drinks are also a part of the junk food area. Soft drinks are incredibly bad for people's health due to their high level of sugar and other components. Fast food is a major reason for obesity and other health problems. A research on causes of obesity done by the medical center...
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...Shedding light on the marketing of junk food to children Shedding light on the marketing of junk food to children Imagine, if you will, a big pile of money. Let’s call it a million dollars. It’s all yours to spend, any way you want. What would you buy? An hour later you get another million to spend. Now what would you do with that money? How about if you got another million dollars an hour later — and kept it up around the clock, all year long? Well, now imagine that deluge of money aimed right at our kids — spent convincing them to eat and drink more and more of the foods and beverages that are least healthy for them. That’s how much money the food and beverage industry in the U.S. spends to reach our children with their messages. One million dollars an hour, every hour of every day, targeted at children and youth. It adds up to $10 to $12 billion dollars a year spent on youth marketing alone. Marketing to children needs to be abolished because it is endangering children’s lives and is extremely out of control. Marketing to children has helped to contribute to the decline in the health of children. Since 1980, overweight rates have doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. According to the National Center for Chronic Disease more than one out of every three U.S. children born in 2000 is expected to get diabetes in their lifetime.. According to the CDC, among overweight children between 5 and 10 years of age, 60 percent already have at least one cardiovascular...
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...Removing Junk Food from Public Schools Christopher Bisping ILR 260 Dr. Dee Griffin February 2013 Abstract Should junk food be removed from public schools? Those who support removing junk food from public schools say that it has no real nutritional value, and disrupts children’s learning capabilities. They also say that junk food is a leading factor of childhood obesity. On the other hand, those who oppose removing junk food from public schools say that it eliminates sources of funding that the U.S. government doesn’t provide. They also say that it usurps the responsibility of parents, and violates the First Amendment. To overcome the obesity epidemic, and give the children the nutrition they need to learn and become productive citizens we need to remove junk food from public schools. Removing Junk Food from Public Schools For the first time, the United States (U.S.) government is proposing standards to ensure schools serve more nutritious foods, ultimately leading to a ban on serving or selling junk food. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is setting new rules requiring schools to sell items such as water, diet sodas, baked chips, and low-calorie sport drinks instead of junk food. Lunchrooms will also be required to replace fatty à la carte items like nachos and fried cheese sticks with healthier items like low-fat burgers, fruit cups, yogurt and healthier pizzas. While some schools in the U.S. have already made improvements to their menus, schools...
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...The idea of taxing junk food and sugary drinks while sound like it could only do good but it more likely to do only more harm. A tax on junk food is said to lower child and adult obesity, create more money for the state and still give the people the choice of junk food if they want. The truth is that taxes on junk food does not help combat obesity, lower junk food consumption and takes away some freedoms from the american people. In this day in age where kids get twelve percent of their calories from fast-food restaurants and child obesity has more than doubled scenes 1980 going from seven percent to eighteen percent in 2012 it is important to worry about children's health but a food tax doesn't do much to help childhood obesity (Szabo, Liz)....
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...people prefer to eat junk food? Do not you just love hamburgers and French fries? But how nutritious are they? There are 160 000 fast food chain restaurants in America. 44% of American’s eat there once per week at these restaurants. Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served quickly. We all have eaten at least once at a fast food restaurant. The most common places of fast food are: Burger King, Jack in the Box, Panda express, KFC, and Church’s. Food is served faster and is delicious; fast food is cheaper and easy to get and sometimes people do not have time to cook so they go and eat fast food; these are some reasons of why people prefer to eat junk food. Pizza, hamburgers, sandwiches, and tacos; they are the best-selling food of these chain restaurants. This is an interesting point because if you are in a hurry you only go through drive thru and ask for the food you want. Besides being fast it is delicious. This is why this kind of food is attractive to many people and especially to kids. This food is easy to prepare but it is not healthy at all. But, why the food is unhealthy? There are some interesting facts and rumors about the fast food, for example that the do the food with ingredients of low quality, the food preparation, etc. Besides being a quick unhealthy food yet delicious, the food is actually cheaper than in other places. That is another reason of why people prefer to eat junk food. A fact is that because this food is cheaper, we have more...
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...Causes and Effects: Junk Food Most of the people nowadays, especially youngsters, prefer to have their meals outside at fast-food restaurants or cafeterias instead of having home-made food. According to a research, 70% of the young children eat fast food frequently in the California, USA (Driscoll, 2013). That type of food is called ‘Junk Food’, which contains high amount of calories and less essential nutrients that are necessary for our body (Anonymous, 2014). Pizzas, hamburgers, soft-drinks, chips, candies etc. are some of the examples of the junk food. Excessiveness in anything is bad, and so is the in-take of junk food. This essay will be discussing about several causes and effects of eating too much junk food on our lives. To start with, junk food’s appealing price and delivery services are causes that motivate people to eat junk food a lot. Junk food prices are comparatively less than that of a healthy food. In a study it is shown that junk food costs $1.50 less per day than healthy food or approximately $550 per year (Polis, 2013). Another leading cause is it is ubiquitous that means it is almost available everywhere. Places like shopping centres where chocolates and candies are placed near the counter or the soda coolers at every exit point of the stores or even fast-food stores within the petrol stations make junk food easily accessible to us (Yum, 2012). Moreover, the junk food is mainly targeting the areas where low-income people live. In a research, it was found...
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...Introductions (no hook yet): Children depend on junk food when they get to school. Whether it be the flaming hot cheetos they always walk past in the lunch line that they just can´t resist, or a pizza that they serve daily. As much as the kids will appreciate the never ending pizza and soda lunches, their bodies would say otherwise. This kind of food being served to students is extremely unhealthy. Kids will most likely alway choose junk food over the healthier option, causing the amount of obese children to increase drasticly, enabling unhealthy habits for these students in the future, and to their children. Paragraph 1: Moreover, kids are constantly choosing junk food over healthy food, and who's to blame them? In other words, if...
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...it's pretty obvious that the Unites States has a problem with people being overweight, and one of the reasons people are obese is because they are eating and drinking unhealthily. Things like candy, soda, and potato chips are big factors in people not eating healthy foods and becoming overweight. Because of this, the government is thinking about implementing a tax on these "non-essential" foods. This would cause the price of these foods to increase and hopefully result in people buying less of them. I agree, the United States government should implement a junk food tax. Some people could argue that this tax wouldn't make a difference as far as reducing the amount of junk food sold. But there is evidence that shows it could be successful. First off, there...
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...ice-cream, and doughnuts as their favorite foods. These Junk Foods have been handed down from cultures around the world. Humans love Junk Foods even though they were and are deemed as Junk Foods. These foods have come a long way, from their humble origins to their modern-day record-holding heavyweight counterparts. Plus, these foods are becoming part of our daily lives and people are considering them as a tasty snack, hassle-free snack, and some of the best snacks to eat in your free time. Many people argue whether Junk Foods in schools should be allowed or whether they need to be banned. Many people feel Junk Foods should not be banned from schools, but for very few reasons. One, If there are snacks at school, students who forget their lunch will have some option to satisfy their hunger. Two, Instead of supplying students with oily, buttery, etc… products, the schools can provide the students with healthier Junk Foods. Such as: juices with less sugar, baked chips, etc… instead of giving the regular or classic Junk Foods. Others who feel Junk Foods should be banned from schools have very strong reasons. One, Junk Foods contains harmful ingredients such as sodium, sugar, etc… The excessive consumption of these materials leads to prevention of the absorption of important materials to the body and also leads to some life-threatening diseases. Two, excessive consumption of Junk Foods lead to other issues because Junk Foods do not contain the materials the human body...
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...According to the FAO (Food and agricultural organization) we have the right to food and what we put into our bodies should be our choice. As of right now the government is trying to decide what we eat because out of every ten people three are obese. Therefore the government is proposing laws to ban certain junk foods, in places such as New York. When it comes down to it the central question is: Should the government be allowed to do so? We have freedom of speech, why not freedom of foods? The government’s attempt to regulate our diets does not get the responsiveness it should. While it may be a very ‘hot topic’, how many citizens actually know of what is going on? Americans as a whole should not be confined to what the government wants us...
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...Food stamps are a way to assist American families stricken by poverty and should not be used to buy junk food, but instead should be used to purchase healthy food. The food stamp program is available to help American families, so they should be helped with regulations on the program that will improve their quality of life. To avoid the abuse of the program, there should be guidelines made for the food stamp program. Taxpayers should know that their money is going to benefit the lives of others, and not be wasted by making unnecessary purchases on junk food. These guidelines and limitations would ultimately improve the health of struggling American families. Food stamps should not be used to purchase junk food because it negatively impacts American families that rely on this program, thus guidelines should be set....
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...The Science of Addictive Junk Food A well known reporter, Michael Moss, shared his concerns with junk food in an article he wrote called, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. Not only is Moss writing this article to show his concerns for the road fast food is taking but he is providing facts to persuade the audience the fast food is not the answer. He is ready to motivate the world that junk food is bad.Moss uses a series of rhetorical appeals such as, the use of a flashback , pathos, logos, and the use of rhetorical questions to support his text on the frightening aspects of junk food itself. Moss beings to approach his topic by providing flashback moment to mention the evening of “April 8, 1999.” In his descriptive Moss is mentioning the day that most fast food C.E.O’s met to discuss the health hazards of fast food. He mentions only the most popular companies, such as Coca-Cola,to get the audience interested in the food that they are actually eating. The flashback was meant to also give the audience the sense of credibility. Moss wanted the audience to feel like they were there living in the moment. He uses descriptive details to make the meeting come to life...
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...Numerous children are getting hooked right off the bat on high-fat, high caloric garbage snacks. According to Junk Food Junkies, frequently kids discover it is easier to get a fast food nibble than a bite of a nutritional snack (Mooney 2011). Television, the internet, and movies bombard them with advertisements for the latest candy, soda, or chips. Vending machines and à la carte lunch options at school are filled with sugar and fat. Even very young children are regularly eating junk food. As per a Gerber Products study, parents permit ten percent of toddlers to eat candy each and every day. In addition, 21 percent of toddlers eat french fries daily, while 23 percent wash them down with sweetened beverages (Mooney 2011). “It’s a minefield out there for kids. Schools have a big part to play, but kids often are not offered the best choices at school or in the community. It’s up to parents to lead by example,” says Alexandra Salazar, a pediatric nutritionist at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City (Mooney 2011). Children in the United States are eating more and more unhealthy foods due to...
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