Now,
Americans spend 41% of their food dollars on foods eaten outside the home, up
from 26% in 1970. Adults and children consume an average of one-third of their
calories from eating out. And more than 25% of Americans eat fast food at least
twice a week. However fast food restaurants in USA have failed to improve the
nutritional value of their menu. I think Americans should reconsider about
their diets. I have three points to support this motion. I will explain all
these points.
First,
fast food is bad for health. Now, over 50% of adults in the US fit into the
category that adults who are overweight. According to a study released today,
people who are obese in middle age are at almost four times greater risk of
developing dementias in later life than people of normal weight. The obesity
crisis and rising levels of chronic diseases have put pressure on fast food
restaurants to cut salt, fat and sugar content of their menus. A researcher
suggests offering more fruit and vegetables, making them default side dishes
with meals, and using containers no bigger than 450ml for sugar-sweetened
beverages and removing them from children's menus because there could be many
possible mechanisms over weight can influence the degradation of the brain.
Therefore, fast foods have a bad effect on our health.
Second is cooking and food education for
children is important. In US, Steven Gerrard who is England football
international is teaming up with medical experts and academics to demand
cooking and food education should remain compulsory for all children aged 5 to
14to help fight obesity. They make clear obesity would be a disaster for the
health of young people if the schools downgrade curriculum now under way allowed
and food education. In the school many children are being given packed lunches
by their parents containing crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks. The experts say
that this prevents children from improving nutritional standards for school
food. Cooking is part of design and technology in the national curriculum,
which is compulsory in all schools. However, all national curriculum are under
review. Food preparation and education activities are removed as required
subjects. A spokesman for education insists that individual schools are
entrusted with these decisions. Although Academies have greater freedom to decide
what to teach, they don’t have to follow the curriculum. However, these
academies must provide a broad and balance education. Gerrard worries about
nutrition and lack of physical activity in young people, especially he is
potentially denying Great Britain many future sports stars. Therefore, the
academies in America have to adopt cooking and food educations.
Third, American should consider about slow
food. Slow food is that promote local foods and centuries-old traditions of
gastronomy and food production. Conversely this means an opposition to fast
food, industrial food production and globalization. Researchers at the
University of Toronto have discovered that people who live in areas, there are
a lot of fast food shops, are heathy less able to slow down and enjoy the
simple things in life such as appreciate images of natural beauty. Urban
workers who force to work longer and longer hours don’t have the time to spend
times on cooking. Fast food is the symbolic product of maturing and recent
capitalism. I think it is important that people preserve traditional and
regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock
characteristic of the local ecosystem. The slow food movements, which started
in the 1980s in Italy, uses the snail as its symbol. The founder find out
modern people who too rush to remember what they have eaten, and felt the
snail’s habit of slowness provided an important message for modern people. The
slow food groups have spread to countries on five continents around the world,
and they have over 80,000 members. I think in a world that seems to continually
race faster and faster, the ideas of the slow food movements help us retrieve a
healthier attitude toward food, culture, time, and the world around us. Therefore,
slow food gives Americans chances to think over their traditional habits.
In conclusion, I wrote about fast food is
bad for health, cooking and food education for children is important, and
American should consider about slow food. For all these reasons, it clearly show that
Americans should reconsider about their diets for their health, education of
children, and traditional habits. If the diet was changed, people are more
activity, and can keep an open mind. It is true that fast food is useful, easy.
However, they prevent us from healthy, cultural and making good use of our
lives. Soren Kierkegaard said that “life can only be understood backwards, but it
must be lived forwards”. We don’t change the past. So we should make the future
a better one for us.
