According to The World is Fat, more than half the money Americans spend on food goes toward food that is not eaten at home. I was thinking about how that type of "on-the-go" lifestyle could affect one's life and family. I grew up without the typical fast food (like McDonald's, Burger King, etc...), and most of my meals were at home. My mom and I (it was just the two of us) would get food to go at a restaurant in town if we didn't feel like cooking that night, but for the most part we prepared our own meals and ate at home. Even my school's hot lunch program was all made as a home-cooked meal, and it was prepared by students. I think there is something particularly special about being involved in making your own food, even if it's not on a regular basis... A little is always better!
As a family especially, I find it very important to spend quality time cooking and eating together. It seems like people's schedules just keep getting busier, and it's hard to find time when everyone is together. Think about how much more relaxing and genuine it is to sit down to a meal at home in comparison to picking up some food from a drive-through and eating it on the go? Plus, if all the kids grow up eating fast food, that is just going to create a cycle of fast-food eaters. By watching and helping their parents cook, a child learns the basics of cooking as well, but if they aren't exposed to that, then they won't have the skills to pass on to their kids (and the cycle will go on...).
These reasons are on top of the health concerns as well. Anything homemade is going to be much healthier and nutritious than fast food! In addition to the health concerns, the lack of family time, and not being involved in making your own food, a few more issues surfaced as I was reading:
- Where does the food at fast food restaurants come from? You hear all these horror stories of factory farms, people finding feathers and bones in their food, and getting food poisoning... How much of that is true? How is the meat really being processed? What are the living conditions of the animals before they are slaughtered, and how does that affect the quality of the food?
- How are the workers paid and treated? What are the working conditions like?
- How do fast food restaurants affect the towns that they are in? Are they located near schools and neighborhoods where kids would have easy access to them?
- What impact do they have on the environment? (Factory farms, transportation of food, pesticides, mass production.
Obesity is used to describe a person's health where his weight of the body is greater than the normal average weight by 20 percent or more. Such person is referred to as obese and with it comes the risk of type-2 diabetes, cardiac arrest and other heart problems, high blood pressure, breast cancer, prostrate and colon cancer, gall bladder ailment etc.
ReplyDeleteFindrxonline in his blog mentions that In United States approximately 3 lakh deaths annually are due to obesity. Some of the common reasons for obesity are detailed hereunder:
Overeating - The foods / drinks that we intake provides energy for carrying out normal body activities like digestion, breathing, walking, standing, sitting etc. For an ideal weight, then amount of energy obtained should balance the energy used. But if the amount of energy obtained is greater than the amount of energy used the excess energy gets converted into "fat" and results in gain in weight. This is one of the most common reasons for overweight and Obesity.