Studies and scientific researches have clearly demonstrated that what we eat profoundly affects our growth and development, especially our ability to enjoy life in its fullest sense. Living in modern times, it is easy to indulge in unhealthy diets and poor eating habits due to limited food choices, the proliferation of unhealthy food so readily available in fast-food restaurants, and the popularity of fad diets that doesn’t give the body the proper nutrition it requires.
Dietary intake is linked to a variety of diseases that can be life threatening, so understanding some of the causes for an unhealthy diet can help us combat this problem. One of the core issues with the unhealthy diet that most people adopt is that the food they eat do not have any real nutritional value. This is caused by the lack of availability of healthy food choices in the market, and the ignorance of the average consumer today. The market is saturated with quick, easy-to-fix meals and junk food which are laden with preservatives and too much carbohydrates.
In a report from University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research (UCLA-CHPR), they found out that approximately two-thirds of California teenagers consume a soft drink everyday. The problem is also compounded by the fact that most people eat foods without knowing their fat or calorie value. If one does not have any idea how much calories they’re eating, it can easily lead to unhealthy eating habits such as overeating which causes obesity and weight gain.
Healthy eating entails consuming a variety of foods so that one gets all the nutrients (such as protein, vitamins, and minerals) needed for a healthy body. Another culprit for unhealthy diets is the proliferation of fast food restaurants around every corner and block in town. It’s fast, easy, and the food rather tastes good. However, eating food from these establishments is not healthy at all. They are cooked in greasy vats of oil and the preparation is not given too much attention.
The fast food industry is one of the major entities that pioneered an unhealthy revolution in food consumption by including the use genetically modified food, chemical additives, cholesterol-rich foods, and other harmful and unhealthy ingredients. If some person was to eat this kind of food everyday, the effects to that person’s health would surely not be good. In the UCLA-CHPR study, they determined that half of the state’s teens dine in fast food restaurants each day, and about 30 percent of which consume fast food three to four times a day.
On the whole, the percentage of Americans who regularly consume some kind of fast food is a staggering 96 percent. Another reason how one can fall into an unhealthy diet is our culture’s obsession with thinness as evinced in the increase of various dieting fads. It is one thing to try to lose weight, but it’s another thing to routinely deprive one’s body the nutrition it requires at the expense of one’s health. Weight-reduction plans such as the Atkins and Zone diets are not nutritionally balanced and can harm the body. In addition to that, when people go on a diet program, they tend to skip meals.
This leads to poor eating habits and the inability to maintain sensible diets. The Centers for Disease Control has reported that about one-third of all cancer deaths are linked to diet. Obesity, heart disease, and arthritis are just some of the complications of having an unhealthy diet. It should be noted that among all the factors of these disease, diet is the one we have most control over. Almost everyone is familiar with the old adage that states: “You are what you eat. ” By that token, one can have a good life with a good diet, and taking a complacent attitude to one’s eating habits can ultimately lead to disaster.