Junk Food Essay

For the last thirty years, junk food has been part of our daily life. Whenever we are hungry, we want to celebrate, or have a quick easy meal, we resort to fast food. In this way, pizza, hamburgers, carbonated beverages (sodas), fried chicken, among others, have replaced the nutritious foods in our diet.

But this is not the healthy way to nourish ourselves.

Why Junk Food is Not Healthy

In my opinion, junk food is certainly not the healthier option when we have to choose what to include in our diet. I clearly know and agree with doctors that junk food consumption must be controlled. Yet, do people really know the consequences this fatty, lack of protein food, have in our body at the time of eating them? To begin with, obesity has a strong bond with fast food. Eating junk food regularly and having a sedentary lifestyle leads to obesity. Obesity leads to other complications like increase in the cholesterol level, blocking of the arteries, the increased risk of coronary diseases, in addition to the physical discomfort that extra weight causes.

As fast food is addictive it is very difficult to give up on these fatty foods and carbonated drinks and switch to healthier options. That is why I conceder that junk food must not have an essential role in our diet. Furthermore, junk food has too much fat, and too much saturated fat in the diet will cause people to put on weight and get fat or obese. For the opposite, healthy foods contain more vitamins and minerals, lower levels of sodium and chemical additives, and healthier oils and fats.

Junk food is high in calories but low in useful vitamins or minerals and it often gets many of its calories from unhealthy saturated fats. That is why, if all the calories that are consumed are from saturated fats, we will be replacing the healthy food for the unhealthy saturated one. Junk food also contains extra salt than the nutritious food and it is unhealthy for the heart, and can cause coronary heart disease. Sugar is essential in junk food as it makes it taste so good. Soft drinks, cordials, biscuits, cakes and lollies all have a lot of sugar. However, too much sugar makes people fat, rots the teeth, is bad for the blood and may cause other diseases. We can observe that the harm fast food means to our body is a fact to consider controlling the amount of junk food we eat, and avoid a regular intake.

Role of Fast Food Restaurants in Economy

In addition, the advertisement fast food restaurants have, such as Mc Donald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut or Taco Bell is really efficient and has an important role on the
increase of obesity all over the world. In the United Kingdom, the Children’s Food Bill is intended to highly regulate the advertising of such food aimed at children, and many other countries are looking forward to do the same. Advertisement helps to increase the consumption of junk food, so, in my opinion, it must be also controlled by the government in order to lower the great number of obese people, harmed by the junk food. Despite the fact that junk food does not have all the nutrients we need to nourish our body, it can definitely be included in our menu, exercising a proper control over their consumption. That is to say, that the benefits of fast food, such as the taste, easy access, instant delivery and affordability can be enjoyed in a correct way if we follow a balanced diet, and in that way it would not cause harm to the body. Taking every argument into consideration, it is clear that fast food risks definitely outnumber its positive effects. The drawback of fast food is that it has almost zero nutritious value. The desire of fast food among children and adults is so much that it has been installed in our daily life, and one cannot avoid its consumption. To conclude, it is not wrong to eat junk food sometimes, provided that it is included in a balanced nutritious diet, controlling the correct amount of it.