Consumption of Junk Food

Question: Discuss about the Consumption of Junk Food. Answer: Introduction: One of the common activities in the contemporary society is the use of junk foods. These are commercially or rather, ready-to-eat food products sole in the market today. Junk food comprises of food products such as ice cream, soft drinks, gum, candy, snacks, sweet deserts, friend fast food, tacos, sugary carbonated carbohydrates, hamburgers, and pizza (Johnson Kenny, 2010). These food products have become so popular since they are used by a large section of the population. They are also used by the children who can access the food products from the restaurants, supermarkets and fast food retail stores in which they simply place the orders, get served and eat right away (Waddingham, Stevens, Macintyre Shaw, 2015). Junk food has been associated with a number of health issues. Research has established that junk food is not healthy for human consumption because of a number of reasons (Vandevijvere Swinburn, 2015). First, the food has been linked with lifestyle diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and peptic ulcer. Junk food has a high level of sugar and calories. This affects the body in many ways such as increasing the amount of fat in the body, something that exposes it to diseases (Smith, Gray, Fleming Parnell, 2014). Besides, junk food can make people to resort to unhealthy eating habits, a practice that can negatively impact on them in many ways. Apart from making them lazy and hate cooking, junk food can be blamed for the wastage of money, loss of appetite as well as stressful living style (Sacks, et al., 2015). This notwithstanding, junk food still remains a popular option for many people. Research has revealed that the popularity of junk food has been linked to many factors (Wen, Simpson, Rissel Baur, 2013). To begin with, it is a very cheap type of food that can be afforded by many people especially the low income families who have no adequate money to spend on expensive, but healthy food products like fruits and veggies. In addition, junk food is readily available and can be easily accessed from the fast food stores, supermarkets, and restaurants spread across the nation (Feldman Vincent, 2005). Last, but not least, junk food is popular because it is a ready-to-eat product that is quite convenient to use since it requires no cooking once it is ordered. It should therefore be acknowledged that junk food is an issue of health concern that should be taken so seriously. The public needs to be adequately sensitized on what junk food is, its negative impacts on human health and how it can be avoided from causing trouble to human life (Mytton, Clarke Rayner, 2012). Aims The main aim of this research was to find out the reasons for the popularity of junk food in the society. The proposed hypotheses of the research are: 1) is junk food dangerous for human consumption? 2) What kames junk food so popular in the modern society? The research has got 2 main aims. First, is to study the reason why fast food is popular amongst different sections of the society. Secondly, the research aims at finding out the factors that make junk food to be so popular in the modern society. References Feldman, S., Vincent, M. (2005). Panic Nation: Unpicking the Myths We're Told About Food and Health. London: John Blake Publishing. Johnson, P., Kenny, P. (2010). "Addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats: Role for dopamine D2 receptors". Nature Neuroscience. 13 (5): 63541 Mytton, O. T., Clarke, D., Rayner, M. (2012). Taxing unhealthy food and drinks to improve health. BMJ, 344(7857), e2931. Sacks, G., et al., (2015). Comparison of food industry policies and commitments on marketing to children and product (re) formulation in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Critical Public Health, 25(3), 299-319. Smith, C., Gray, A. R., Fleming, E. A., Parnell, W. R. (2014). Characteristics of fast- food/takeaway-food and restaurant/cafe-food consumers among New Zealand adults. Public health nutrition, 17(10), 2368-2377. Vandevijvere, S., Swinburn, B. (2015). Getting serious about protecting New Zealand children against unhealthy food marketing. NZ Med J, 128(1417), 36-40. Waddingham, S., Stevens, S., Macintyre, K., Shaw, K. (2015). Most of them are junk food but we did put fruit on there and we have water What children can tell us about the food choices they make. Health Education, 115(2), 126-140. Wen, L. M., Simpson, J. M., Rissel, C., Baur, L. A. (2013). Maternal junk food diet duringpregnancy as a predictor of high birthweight: Findings from the healthy beginnings trial. Birth, 40(1), 46-51.