The human stomach is dumb. It can’t determine healthy food from trash. As long as it tastes good and is filling, the stomach won’t discriminate. This is not intended to spoil your love for fast food and restaurants. You may recall the last time you went to a restaurant with its superb ambiance, excellent service, delectable food, and all the aromatic wonders that made you forget the price tag. Fast foods and restaurants are designed to make people fat, period. Fast food and restaurant owners aren’t concerned much about your diet as long as the food they offer tastes good and customers pay to eat them. Since profit is most important, the owners of your favorite restaurants will buy cheaper raw goods such as pork, beef, fruits, and vegetables from some agribusiness firm which sells these raw items cheap and in huge quantities. Restaurant and fast-food owners could also buy these raw materials from the public market, not as cheaply but still enough to make a profit. Big agribusiness wants profits too. They must produce agricultural products quickly and in large quantities. That’s when artificial fertilizers and modified growing systems of animals and plants come into the picture. We know that when we mess with nature, oftentimes nature strikes back. But that’s another story. The point is: if a pig, not naturally grown, is twice as large as naturally-grown pigs, it is also twice as lethal to your health. That is, not to obesity has become a major crisis in America. As Lisa Takeuchi Cullen writes in TIME Magazine, in America, the less money you have, the likelier you are to be overweight. She said that the best place to start is the cost of food – quality food. Cullen goes on: “Calorically speaking, the best bang for the buck tends to be packed with sugar, fat and refined grains (think cookies and candy bars). In general, processed foods hog ever larger portions of all Americans’ diets – one reason we spend just a tenth of our income on food today, compared with a fifth in 1950. “But a pound of lean steak costs a lot more than a pound of hot dogs… Processed foods aren’t just cheap, tasty and filling, they’re also more accessible.” How did this happen? Nutritionists and medical experts pinpoint the problem to the quality of food we now eat and the lack of physical activity as main factors to the obesity problem. They say that what we eat most, no small thanks to big agribusinesses and processed food manufacturers, is food not organically grown and are stripped of its natural essential nutrients. In layman’s terms, we are eating food that contributes more to our bulging belly than give us proper nutrients. In most ways, that is, minus the rich and poor issue, the same is true in the Philippines. The real issue is the quality of food we eat. It goes without saying, Filipinos just love food that cracks, is crunchy, salty, frozen, fried, dried, and canned. In short, Filipinos love junk food, something that Filipinos can’t do without. Recommended articles are found on these links: The next time you’re tempted to eat in the best restaurants in town, think of the worst enemies of your waistline: saturated fat and animal fat. Or you could imagine yourself in the near future wearing your favorite bathing suit, posing for the primary photo in your Friendster account.
Many people aren’t as concerned with looking fat and ugly, possibly getting cancer or suffering form heart disease and dying. Just pass the salt and the spaghetti.
http://nutrition.about.com/od/nutrition101/a/keepitsimple.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994387,00.html
mention your diet.
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