Summary

Once food shortage was a major concern, a major problem but after the
2nd world war technological advances in food production led to a new era
that was characterised as an over abundance in inexpensive food with
relatively little manual labour. Over the next decade there was a cultural
shift in the food industry and women who generally made food at home in
the average family joined the work forces and that contributed to the
change in the way we ate. Later on the food industry capitalized on our
need for feast and convenient food, this decrease the amount of food that
was being made at home and was replaced with more processed food with
a higher calorie intake than when cook at home thus making the general
calorie intake increase to a very high degree. The changes in the way we
as a society ate led to the emergence of obesity as a recognised chronic
disease with well defined health consequences. Health recommendations
were sent to try and help with this disease, during the 20th century people
wanted a diet with reduced saturated fat and the food industries attention
was shifted on giving the people what they want, but with fat gone they had
to find a way to make the food taste good so they added more sugar and
other forms of sugar i.g corn syrup, this not only helped how the taste but
also increased their shelf life, this was a huge incentive for them to add
these sugars to other processed foods this simple addition fueled our
modern day epidemics, obesity and diabetes. These shifts in our food
consumption and diet has led to a point in history where a physiological
adaptation (our ability to store energy as fat) has now become maladaptive
the balance between food availability and energy expenditure has been
disrupted and has left with an exponential increase in obesity over tthe past
60 years, an epidemic that the World Health Organisation has labeled a
worldwide public health crisis.
Sugar

Over 60 years the amount of sugar consumed by the westearn diet has
increased dramatically, surprisingly some experts has estimated that only
1/6th of our sugar come from things we consider desserts or food we think
of as sweets, most of our sugar comes from highly processed foods and
sweetened drinks. Over the years people has realized their need to
decrease their sugar intake but what many people still aren’t aware of is
sugar under a variety of different pseudonyms is added to so many foods
that we don’t expect it to contain sugar. In 2015 The World Health
Organisation published guidelines to help with your diet and other illnesses
it also strongly recommend to reduce sugar intake. The natural sugar in
things like milk and fruits are allowed as there has been no records of fruits
causing health problems. Another thing that was brought up was that
focusing on reducing on nutrient and not having a balance between all that
is needed could lead to other health problems thus having a healthy diet is
so heavily recommended.

Carbohydrates

All nutrients are not created equal, especially when it come to our health,so
our focus from nutrients to the food we eat we can develop a diet that gives
a good balance of nutrients. When we consume refined foods such as soda
and bread the carbohydrates we consume goes into our body in a spike
before it dies down and glucose is added to in a similar way to help reduce
the sugar in the blood thus causing us to get hungry faster, where as with
fruits the sugar released doesn’t spike and goes in a more slowed way and
the glucose released to it doesn’t go over boundaries. When we speak of
carbohydrates we are talking about a large family with foods that are bad
and good for our health so learning how to choose the right foods for every
nutrient is a good diet.
Protein

Protein rich foods including animal and plant based foods can vary in the
quality and the implications for our long term health. Protein is said to act
as building blocks for the lean tissues in our bodys, there are also many
other functions that protein helps with in our body. There are 20 types of
amino acids that help with these functions but only 9 are essential meaning
our body doesn’t make enough of them and we get it from our food.
Generally animal protein such as fish and eggs have a high enough
concentration of these amino acids that we call these foods complete
protein sources. In contrast plant based proteins like beans, nuts and tofu
are called incomplete proteins. Incomplete proteins are put together with
other proteins to make a complete protein, and it is much better than
animal based protein as plants has more fibre and less saturated fat.

Nutrition Facts Label

Nutrition Facts Labels are there to display the ingredients, vitamins, fat,
calories etc. This can help when you are picking out food, as you know
what is in it and it can help with picking out a healthy diet. Sometime this
can be misleading as it can say a drink has vitamin A and C so it must be
healthy but this is just added back vitamins that aren’t healthy like natural
one are.

Processed Foods

The problem with our day to day diet is that most of the food we eat are
processed and refined, they are refined and processed by food industries
to make then softer and to prolong their shelf life. Processed foods live long
on the shelf because pests like mold and other fungi grow much more
slowly because of the low amount of natural nutrients.
Processed Foods are bad for us

My reasoning for saying this is because of the facts and information that
has been provided, although processed foods are convenient it is not good
for our health. The reason why is because of how refined it is, its refined
with nutrients taken out and put in artificially meaning not very real or
natural and that causes hidden or non hidden heath problems that could
harm our lives. As everything is artificially made ,refined and processed it it
takes away the natural health benefits and nutrients in exchange for
prolonged life on a shelf, so yes I think processed foods are bad for us.