Fruits, vegetables, unprocessed foods, organic, and lean meats are all expensive. When you don’t have much money to spend to feed yourself and your family, you are looking at ways to buy the most money for your dollar, not the healthiest foods for your dollar. Unfortunately a bag of carrots doesn’t look as appealing as a bag of chips, most children would rather eat chips as well, and when you can’t buy much food you don’t want to have your children waste any, so you’re going to buy something they will eat. Foods that are highly processed, foods that don’t expire quickly, and most foods that are bought in bulk for a low price, are poor choices of food, and these are the foods that will lead to unhealthy bodies. Sugars, starches, sodium, everything that is in a processed food, just helps fat accumulate on the body, and in the arteries.
Imposing a junk food tax draws attention to one of the most imperative questions which is how to define foods as unhealthy. Researcher Oliver T Mytton stresses that it is impossible to accurately measure how consumption of unhealthy foods directly contributes to health problems. For instance, many Americans eat unhealthy, but if they combine this with regular exercise, it may not be detrimental to their healthy appearance. With that being said, how do you classify food as “junk food?” Some people believe candy and chips are junk food while others believe that carbs are junk. What about sugary granola bars?
English 091 19 March 2013 The Effects of Meal Outsourcing Fast-food is more than a quick-easy meal to be inhaled on the way to somewhere more important. Its negative effects touch one physically, emotionally, and financially. It is true that there are healthy choices offered while eating out, meals can be shared even if not cooked at home, and there are low-cost options on fast food menus. Choosing to not cook and eat a family meal at home has negative health consequences, causes a deterioration of the family relationship, and has a higher cost. Even with healthier choices, one cannot be aware of exactly what is in the food cooked in restaurants, while families can opt out of the drive-through and go in to sit and eat together at fast-food establishments it isn't as intimate and the time is rushed, low-cost options on fast food menus cost more than cooking a family meal at home.
In David Suzuki’s “Food Connections”, the view of urban supermarkets is portrayed as a major dysfunction, disconnecting the consumer from the land. Suzuki contrasts wealthy people against those from less fortunate areas of the world. He states that those less fortunate are benefiting from their more traditional style markets with organic products and that people with access to supermarkets are losing there connection to the earth and being sold genetically modified products. Developed countries around the world have the technology for copious amounts of refrigeration. Allowing the consumer access to fresh fruits and vegetables from many regions worldwide.
Independent of the price fluctuations, consumers are increasingly having trouble figuring out what, exactly, they're eating. Local doesn't necessarily mean "local." "Organic" doesn't necessarily mean hormone-free and that the animals or livestock won't be penned-in. (Andrew Chung, Toronto star, April 27th 2008.) This research paper will essentially dwell on the fact that organic food is just merely another trend or one could even call it a fad and is not necessarily a healthy nutritious alternative to conventional foods.
As according to Kolko (2012), poverty in one nation is similar but exclusively different from poverty in another. Appropriately the characteristics of poverty correlate to the definition of a wicked problem. Access to wholesome nutritional food should be attainable by everyone. In today’s society fast food is more readily available than fresh foods, as dairy and vegetables are more costly (McDermott & Stephens, 2010). Households are “forced” to purchase inferior processed food, as nutritional food has become unaffordable (Hill 2012).
Even when the food is available locally, you will find the same food from another state or country in the supermarket. While having these foods available to us provides many advantages, importing food from abroad or from around the country also has many disadvantages. Being able to keep up with the growing population and food demand is a great advantage of having foods from around the world brought in and having the technology available to deliver it to underdeveloped countries. More and more areas in the United States are being developed to keep up with the growing population to provide housing and businesses, this is diminishing our farmland at an alarming rate. According to the National Resources Inventory, which tracks and documents the nation's natural resources, conditions and trends, 4,080,300 acres of farmland were transformed for development between 2002 and 2007.
Z Vang Understanding of our Food Some people prefer to have knowledge about their food such as where it is coming from and how the food was prepared. Some people are just ignorant and buy whichever that are cheap or looks the best. Some people do not have time to go deep into knowing their food resulting in unhealthy eating. These days the food industry decorates food and attracts the customers with their products that may not be healthy at all, brainwashing consumers’ mind in making them forget the reality of food. In the essay, “The Pleasures of Eating” by Wendell Berry, he states that the society lacks the knowledge of the making of their food and whether the food is healthy or unhealthy.
On the consumers side they have plenty of arguments. For example, they say we do not know how much enough is. We cannot know how many calories are in each item. Like Zinczenko said, “There are no calorie information charts on fast-food packaging the way there are on grocery items” (7). Another example is that fast food is unhealthy, how would we suppose to know this.
Those without transportation are subjected to shopping at convenience and corner stores. Residents with better access to supermarkets and reliable transportation are less likely to develop obesity and more likely to have a healthy diet. But, where healthy food is more costly, sugars and fats are inexpensive and abundant. Families that are low-income try to stretch the dollar by buying cheap foods that are filling. These foods are of low quality, and have been the leading cause of obesity.