Essay On How Processed Foods Affect Our Health

Improved Essays
How Processed Foods Affect Our Health
Have you ever felt guilty after eating a large bag of Doritos? Food is the fuel that keeps our body functioning correctly. The growth and maintenance of our body are possible because of nutrients and energy we obtain when we eat. Nowadays, many people in the world are getting sick with food related diseases. This is happening because the quality of what we are eating is not adequate. With the development of new technologies in the last years, processed foods have become a significant part of our nutrition. This type of food doesn’t come from natural sources and its creation involves chemical processes that are not suitable for our body. Processed foods affect our health because they contain high amounts of artificial ingredients that
…show more content…
This substance is widely used as a substitute for sugar because is cheaper to produce. HFCS can be found in many processed food, such as ketchup, salad dressings, yogurt, cereals and sweetened beverages. People should be very careful because many of these products in the supermarket claim to be sugar free, but the truth is they are full of High Fructose Corn Syrup which is as harmful as sugar. Studies have proven that sugar intake in any form, especially HFCS, is the main cause of obesity and diabetes.
In addition, there is a reason why processed food has become so popular in the last twenty years. Food companies have spent a lot of money researching what makes people buy a specific product. These studies have shown that the human appetite lean toward foods that are sweet, salty and fatty. Consequently, most processed foods have been designed to be incredibly rewarding to the brain so that we feel the need to keep eating them. People are addicted to these products because this kind of food affects their behavior and thoughts making them lose control over their

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    As also stated in one of Moss’ previous books, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, these ingredients are added to processed foods to have consumers crave more. For the average person, the recommended sugar intake is about 6 teaspoons per day. With major food companies adding sugar to all of their foods, it is easy to go over the recommended amount. For example, a simple jar of spaghetti sauce contains sugar. As Moss previously said about this extra ingredient to pasta sauce “the food industry already knew some things about making people happy—and it started with sugar……

    • 1606 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some people may argue that by eating processed food you are not getting all the nutrients or vitamins that you need in your daily diet, but what many people do not know is that there are still vitamins in processed foods. The only real argument that the wholesome food activists actually have is that processed food is bad for you because it is not natural or grown and a lot of artificial stuff is added into them. Also there are many other factors that contribute to the obesity rate that is not processed food, like exercising, air quality, and medical care…

    • 1263 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    People who are dependent solely on processed foods either don’t have time to make food or are too lazy. “What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort -- taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles -- to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive” (Moss…

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Unlike, the natural sugars that are found in fruits, refined sugars are chemically produced and added to foods such as breakfast cereals, luncheon meats and donuts. Research has shown that refined sugar has a devastating effect on the body. Too much sugar can lead to obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (Authority…

    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the course of time, Americans were getting fatter and vulnerable to more diseases. Americans eating habits changed. They chose meats and fatty foods, instead of food that contain nutrients, minerals, and vitamins we needed. While America grew, so did the people living there. Fast-Foods were growing nationwide and were cheaper, quicker, and easier to buy.…

    • 909 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Michael Pollan’s article “Unhappy Meals” in The New York Times, has lots of certain advice to steer away from the tricks of processed foods and have America move into a healthier lifestyle. He suggests that processed foods imply they are based around important nutrients to help support human health, when in reality…

    • 2977 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Pros And Cons Of HFCS

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages

    According to the International Journal of Obesity, the authors explain that HFCS is one of the most misinterpreted food ingredients. This corn syrup was developed in the 1960s as an alternative to sucrose, which is table sugar. Throughout their research it was shown that HFCS peaked in 1999 and has been in decline since and while at its peak Americans still did not consume as much as they did sucrose. The name High Fructose Corn Syrup has become very misleading because of the name “high fructose,” leads people to believe it has more fructose than sucrose does, but it does not, compared to table sugars. However, manufacturers have yielded to adverse publicity and removed HFCS from their products and replaced it with sucrose despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the two sugars are metabolically equivalent.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Most people seem to agree that processed food is unhealthy. When they think of processed foods they think about fat drenched meals, like what you get from going to fast food chains. This has led to an explosion of companies selling wholesome foods, foods that have little to no processing, because they believe that it is healthier then all of that proceeded synthetic foods. But not everyone agrees. David H. Freedman does not believe this notion.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Avoid food products containing ingredients that are (a) unfamiliar, (b) unpronounceable, (c) more than five in number, or that include (d) high fructose corn syrup.” (para 9) Just as Pollan suggests not following these rules won’t harm anyone instead it is a helpful indicator of what foods have been highly processed. There are countless numbers of processed foods that the average American will consume under the assumption that the writing on the box is “true”. Michael Pollan argues that food use to be made with a few amount of ingredients however, now they keep trying to improve foods by reducing the amount of fats or sodium. In result the foods are being slammed with more and more ingredients that the average person has not even heard of or can even pronounce out…

    • 1038 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In America food companies rely on synthetic nutrients and other unhealthy ingredients to sell their products. These ingredients, with little or no nutritional value are added to thousands of food products that we consume everyday. These…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Expect the Unexpected Michael Pollan has been writing books for the past twenty-five years, informing society about his belief in respect to what is considered food and what is not considered food. He believes that nature and culture affect our daily food intake and how we build our eating tendencies. In fact, one of his famous books called, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manisfesto” can help the reader fully understand his theory. Pollan’s goal or reason behind writing this book is “to help us reclaim our health and happiness as eaters.” Most of the food we consume is processed food that comes in packages and claim anything but healthy.…

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    These processed foods can cause a plethora of health issues including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, blood clots, clogged arteries, heart attacks, seizures, allergic reactions, obesity, headaches and asthma. All these factors contribute to a decreased life expectancy, high medical bills, and a complicated life. To ensure a healthy future, the government must provide better information about the contents in these processed foods. From a young age, we cram foods into our bodies that destroy us from the inside out. We worry about the pathogens we may be consuming like salmonella or E. coli instead of the chemicals and preservatives like BHA and azodicarbonamide.…

    • 1362 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Highly Processed Food Unhealthy FoodHighly processed food are modified food designed to have a long shelf-life through adding unhealthy ingredients and artificial chemicals. High processed foods are often low in vitamins, minerals, and fiber. They are also and high in salt, trans fats, sugars, and refined grains. These foods don't keep you satiated, make you crave for more and binge eat, make you gain fat, retain water and increase your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Highly processed foods are very popular, highly addictive and very bad for you.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We as humans are guilty of succumbing to our bodies temptations to treat ourselves to a Big Mac or a Doritos Locos Taco from our favorite fast food chains, and as we do we have a large negative impact on the earth without even realizing it. With our help fast food industries like McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Taco Bell-- some of the world’s most popular fast food industries-- are destroying the health of our Earth’s environment and its inhabitants. Fast food contain a lot of harmful chemicals used to alter the taste and longevity of some of the products like preservatives, flavoring agents, and pesticides (Byloos). Chemicals like Butylated Hydroxyanisole-- or BHA for short-- act as chemical preservative as it is added to foods with oils in order to increase their longevity. It also helps to keep the oil from seeping into burger wrappers, chicken nugget cartons, french frie containers, or pizza boxes.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The olfactory system, the sensory system contributing to the sense of smell, is often overlooked by the average person causing distortion as to how it functions, coupled with the gustatory system, to differentiate the different flavors in food which in turn allows us to classify food as delicious, good, unpleasant, or disgusting. In the other hand, the same can’t be said for the food industry, who spent numerous resources into understanding this specific sensory systems with the aim of engineering food that is to crave for with the intention of maximizing their profits. The ability for humans to identify flavors is caused by the signals sent to the brain by different receptors in the mouth and nose that interpret chemicals found within the…

    • 1159 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays