Junk food is a pejorative
term for food
containing high levels of calories
from sugar
or fat
with little protein, vitamins
or minerals. Use of the term implies that a
particular food has little "nutritional
value" and contains excessive fat, sugar, salt, and calories.
Junk food can also refer to high protein food containing large amounts of meat
prepared with, for example, too much unhealthy saturated fat;
many hamburger outlets, fried chicken outlets and the like supply food
considered junk food.
Despite being labeled as
"junk," such foods usually do not pose any immediate health concerns
and are generally safe when integrated into a well balanced diet. However,
concerns about the negative health effects resulting from the consumption of a
"junk food"-heavy diet have resulted in public health
awareness campaigns, and restrictions on advertising
and sale in several countries.
For many parents, helping
children develop healthy
eating habits is a struggle. With the hectic pace of many families'
lives and with more women working full time, even health-conscious parents are
finding it easy to tolerate less than desirable eating habits.
"A lot of parents don't
want to struggle with the issues so they give up, letting kids make their own
choices," says Jane Rees, director of nutrition service/education in
adolescent medicine and lecturer in pediatrics at the University of Washington
schools of Medicine and Public Health. "But children's judgment is less
mature and they still depend on parents to guide them."
It is best to start training
children about foods as soon as they can talk since they are most influenced by
their families during the preschool years. Additionally, research has shown
that heart and blood vessel disease can begin very early and that hardening of
the arteries (arteriosclerosis or atherosclerosis) can be associated with a
high-fat diet.
Parents should carefully read
food labels to check nutrients and ingredients. Most kids are attracted to the
advertising and packaging of food, including highly sugared cereals. Rees
suggests fitting them in occasionally as a treat in an overall diet that is
focused on low sugar, low fat, and unprocessed foods.
Although it's a myth that
children become hyperactive by eating too much sugar, sugary food is still bad
for oral health, can be stored as fat, and aggravates diabetes, says Rees.
However, completely denying children sugar will only make it more tempting.
Rees suggests involving young children
in the food preparation process. For example, teach children how to set the
table during their preschool years. Take them grocery shopping. Let them choose
some fruits and vegetables as well as the occasional treats, advises Rees.
"You will see their capabilities grow astronomically," she says.
"However, if parents don't follow the natural signs that kids are ready to
help, they will lose the window of opportunity."
Developing children's attitude toward food should be
similar to teaching them how to handle money -- by giving them growing
responsibility along with sensible access. If children are properly prepared,
they are more likely to make healthy food choices once they enter school. They
will probably experiment some, but they will have a preference for fresh foods
like fruits and vegetables along with foods like french fries, says Rees.
What about changing the diet of children who have
already fallen into the junk food habit? Once children reach age 10 or 12, it
is very difficult to change their habits or coerce them into eating healthier
foods. Rees suggests calling a family meeting to rationally discuss ways to
eliminate most junk foods and substitute more nutritious ones. If they learn to
eat a well-balanced diet, they won't need vitamin supplements, she says.
"Nutritional guidance won't work unless you have
built up good sense (of nutrition) over time," says Rees. "However,
even children who have developed a taste for nutritious food may change when
they reach teenage years. Teenagers like to experiment with everything,
including risky food behavior. They might gravitate toward highly processed
foods, but once they become older and more independent they are likely to
return to the healthy habits they had growing up."
Other common problems among teenagers include girls
who may view food as a threat to slimness, or boys who take muscle-building
supplements. About 25 to 40% of teenagers are overweight, mostly from lack of
exercise in combination with eating too much fat and sugar. This problem can
turn into an emotional one and become a vicious circle -- eating, or starving,
to cope with unhappiness.
"If you see a real eating problem and there is
anger and conflict," advises Rees, "seek professional
intervention." Helpful support of family, friends and healthcare
professionals is the best method for addressing eating disorders.
We all know that junk food like
pizza, ice cream, and soda is bad for our health, but is it also addicting?
The study of food addiction is
an emerging and controversial field. But according to Ashley Gearhardt, a
researcher who focuses on food addiction at the University of Michigan and
helped establish the guidelines for the Yale Food
Addiction Scale, highly processed foods can lead to classic signs of
addiction like loss of control, tolerance, and withdrawal. A growing body of
research backs her up—and that’s especially concerning in children because an
addiction forged in a child’s early years could put the child at more serious
risk for chronically unhealthy eating into adulthood.
First Lady Michelle Obama, in a
rare overtly political speech on Tuesday, admonished
Congressional Republicans for a proposal that would weaken
nutritional standards in school lunches, dismantling a policy she has
personally fought for. “The stakes couldn’t be higher on this issue,” the First
Lady said. She may be right in more ways than one.
Less is known about food
addiction in kids than in adults, but some research suggests that kids, like
adults, have a relationship with food that looks an awful lot like traditional
addiction to alcohol or drugs. A 2011 qualitative
study of almost 30,000 people ages 8-21 examined poll responses,
chat room transcripts and message board comments from overweight and obese
children on a website launched as an overweight intervention tool for teens and
preteens. The researchers found that children used classic addiction language
when describing their relationship to food, including an inability to cut down,
continued use despite negative consequences, and withdrawal symptoms when those
foods were not available. The research was published in Eating Disorders:
The Journal of Treatment & Prevention.
Kids may be even more prone to
addiction than adults, says Gearhardt, because their brains haven’t developed
impulse control yet. And though the research hasn’t begun on this idea, it
isn’t a stretch to posit that early exposure to addicting foods might lead to
worse impulse control later in life. Research suggests that teenagers who abuse
substances like alcohol and cigarettes are at greater risk for substance abuse
later in life. Gearhardt explains: “The more kids are exposed to [junk foods]
early in life, the more it is going to set them up for problems. They’re brains
are still pretty plastic.”
The best way to keep kids
healthy, says Gearhardt, is to eliminate the option to eat junk food all
together (yes, that means getting rid of vending machines in schools), rather
than simply giving them more access to healthy fruits and vegetables. “No one
is binging on broccoli. No one eats strawberries until they throw up. If these
kids are so used to eating junk foods, those other foods just can’t compete”
she says. ”
“If you keep offering more water
at a bar, people are still going to drink alcohol.” But unlike a bar, she
points out, kids don’t have the option of going elsewhere, making it even more
imperative to make school lunch healthy.
The
most contains of junk foods are saturated that could affect cell on the brain,
it called neurotransmitter. Somebody who continually consume saturated will damage
their mental. It could be depression. Because the big amount of vitamins and
mineral lost of your body, so your hormones and blood pressure become high, and
then could disturb your brain process.
- Psychological problems:
Some of
experts said that junk foods could cause physical problems and changes the
brain function. You will be addicted of this delicious food then make you easy
to get high emotional.
- Anxiety:
Because you
lacking of omega-3 or fatty acids and carbohydrates can make you get excessive
anxiety, shaking, and fatigue.
- Hyperactivity:
Too much
consume sodium benzoates, artificial dyes, and all of the food that consist of
high calories sugar can make you hyperactive. Also the junk food is one of
them.
- Break your brain:
Preservatives,
artificial colors, unhealthy fats, refined carbohydrates are also available in
junk foods. It means that the junk foods it unhealthy food will make you get a
lot of mental problems. Many experts in health care suggest to us to leave the
junk food.
lthy baby, a woman’s diet before pregnancy
seems to matter. Consuming a lot of sugars, fats and take-out foods might
increase the likelihood of delivering a baby preterm, Australian researchers report in the July Journal of
Nutrition.
Preterm birth, defined as birth before 37 weeks of
gestation, increases the risk of infant mortality or health problems later in
life. While healthful eating during pregnancy has been associated with a lower
risk of preterm birth, the study authors say that their findings now extend
this link to the period before conception.
Poor nutrition, says study coauthor Jessica Grieger, a
nutrition researcher at the University of Adelaide, may promote inflammation in
women and activate hormones such as oxytocin and cortisol that have been linked
to preterm birth.
Grieger and her colleagues identified 309 women who
had recently become pregnant and obtained from them dietary intake data for the
year preceding conception. The researchers then scored each woman based on how
much of her diet drew from three categories: a high-protein diet including
fish, whole grains, chicken and fruits; a diet with plenty of vegetables,
legumes and whole grains; and one with lots of take-out foods, refined grains,
sugars and junk food such as potato chips.
After the women gave birth, the researchers calculated
that those who had scored high on the high-protein diet before conception were
the least likely to give birth preterm and women with a high junk food score
were the most likely. The preterm birth rate was middling among women consuming
a predominantly veggie-legumes diet. The researchers took into account
differences between the women in body mass, smoking status, asthma, age,
socioeconomic factors and ethnicity.
Physician Bo Jacobsson of Sahlgrenska University
Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, says the possibility that diet before pregnancy
affects delivery “seems rational but is not scientifically proven with this
study.”To establish a clear effect, scientists will also need to control for
diet differences throughout pregnancy itself, he says. Nevertheless, Jacobsson
endorses this line of research, arguing that maintaining a good pattern of diet
and exercise when planning to get pregnant could help to ensure a healthy start
to gestation.
To some extent, the new findings resemble results from
a study of thousands of pregnant Norwegian women that Jacobsson and his
colleagues published earlier this year. That study divided women’s intake into
one of three groups: a diet high in protein and veggies, a traditional diet
heavy on fish and potatoes or one featuring processed and fast foods. Writing
in BMJ in March, the researchers found low preterm birth rates among the first two
groups.
Eating patterns before and during pregnancy typically
overlap since most women don’t know exactly when they become pregnant and many
pregnancies are unplanned. What’s more, women don’t necessarily change their
diet upon learning they are pregnant. Researchers at England’s University of
Southampton reported in 2009 that
newly pregnant women reduced their smoking, drinking and caffeine intake but
didn’t alter their eating habits markedly.
“We feel there is often a lack of understanding about
the important role of nutrition in pregnancy by mums-to-be and even partners,”
Grieger says. She says the new findings should provide doctors with additional
information as they counsel women
What
is it that keeps so many of us bellying up for double-decker burgers, dipping
repeatedly and obsessively into bags of crunchy chips, and chasing it all down
with super-sweet soda?
These so-called junk foods hit us right where our
taste buds live and also satisfy a love of sugar that we’re born with. But the
burgeoning, and in some cases, chronic, consumption of junk is driven by peer
pressure and marketing—not physiological need—say nutrition experts.
“People love the way they taste,” said Marion Nestle, Paulette
Goddard Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University.
But she said, that love is aided and abetted by the fortunes that manufacturers
put into formulating those products, marketing them, and establishing brand
loyalty. “Studies show that brand preference trumps taste every time,” said
Nestle.
What is junk food? “Most people know a junk food when
they see one,” Nestle said, paraphrasing Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s
1964 pronouncement on pornography. The official definition, she said, is “a
highly processed food of minimal nutritional value relative to calories.” That
would include soft drinks, which have no nutrients, but lots of calories, and
fast food, which may contain some nutrients, but they are accompanied by loads
of excess salt and sugar.
Junk is considered bad for us because it rewards the
brain—through pathways that are similar to those observed with the ingestion of
powerfully addictive drugs—but it does not enhance the body.
McDonald’s recently has gone on the offensive, aiming,
it says, to correct misperceptions about what’s in its food and to meet
consumer demand for more nutrition information. But the campaign seems to be
raising more questions than it answers. In one of a series
of YouTube videos put out by the company, it reveals that there are 19
ingredients in its French fries. The list includes salt and potatoes, but also
a handful of preservatives, and different oils—some hydrogenated, which have
known health risks—plus wheat, and “natural beef flavor,” among other
additives.
Manufacturers create foods to meet multiple needs:
being able to make mass quantities that have a consistent quality; making
something that’s tasty and will sell well; and hitting on a formula that will
keep us coming back for more. Journalist Michael Moss detailed food makers’
huge junk food R&D and marketing enterprises in a 2013 story for the New
York Times and a later book.
Moss documented a multi-billion-dollar engineering
process that creates flavor profiles designed to appeal to humans’ innate love
of sugar, and the additional lip-smacking triumvirate of salt, fat and crunch.
The average consumer wouldn’t necessarily discover these food products without
some help. According to Moss, the $1 trillion food industry, with so much at
stake, pays to have its processed foods placed at eye level on grocery store
shelves. And of course, there are huge advertising campaigns, and tie-ins with
celebrities, TV shows, cartoons, and movies.
Children are most vulnerable. The Center for the Science in the Public Interest, a
nutrition watchdog organization, says that studies show that the ad blitzes and
tie-ins easily capture childrens’ attention, who not only start building brand
awareness and loyalty, but in turn are often a linchpin in influencing what
their parents buy.
CSPI, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, among
other groups, have long pressured fast food chains and food conglomerates to
rein in marketing to kids and to offer healthful alternatives. As a result,
Burger King just recently joined several other fast food purveyors in saying it
will remove soda from
its kids’ menus.
Why is this important? CSPI, in a 2006 report urging
responsible food marketing to children, said that since the 1990s, the rates of
obesity have doubled in children and tripled in teens, and that most are eating
nutritionally-poor diets that are too high in calories, saturated and trans
fat, refined sugars, and salt, and too low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
and calcium. Everyone’s looking ahead to a future full of adults with serious
chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Are junk foods addictive? Moss believes so. He
described how Frito-Lay’s Cheetos product might help hook people, with what one
scientist described as vanishing caloric density—the ability to trick the brain
into thinking no calories were being consumed, even as the quick-melting corn
snack drove the eater into wanting—and eating—more.
But Nestle said the jury is still out. “I don’t think
you need to invoke addiction to explain why people like to eat them,” she said.
“They taste good and satisfy hunger. Whether they are good for long-term health
is an entirely different matter.”
You can enjoy some junk food, like
my Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, without compromising your body
composition, health, or longevity.
Your favorite foods are poisoning you.
Even foods that you thought were safe are actually
destroying your health, making you fat, and shortening your life.
That’s what you’ve been taught to believe.
If there’s one mistaken idea that’s become more
embedded in the fitness and health industry than any other, it’s that certain
foods are bad for you.
This myth is so entrenched that it’s promoted by
everyone from gym rats to doctors to public health authorities.
Most diet books are based on the idea that “bad”
foods will keep you from losing weight or slow your progress.
There’s no doubt that what you eat can have a massive
impact on your health, performance, and body composition. However, there’s no
evidence you can’t achieve all of these things while still enjoying any food
you like.
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