Mass producing Foods has become a booming industry that
makes a lot of profit. But do people know how badly this processed food affects
them? Processed foods are very unhealthy for human consumption and for the
environment. Manufacturers have to take down many trees and remove wildlife to
acquire space to build their factories.
Mass produced foods contain many chemicals to make the
food taste normal and to be able to make more of the food. Most meats and patties
for fast food restaurants start off with a mash of meats called “pink slime”.
Pink slime is meat that has been ground up and washed down with ammonium
hydroxide. The buns in most fast food places like McDonalds, have; “Enriched
Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin
Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), High Fructose Corn Syrup” (Robin Konie,
2012) And that’s only a few of the ingredients used in just the patty. These
few added ingredients are bad for your health like High Fructose Corn Syrup.
High Fructose corn syrup is bad for you because it can cause obesity and disease
if eaten too much. Enriched flour is another added ingredient, it add extra
calories that the body doesn’t need, and the consumer gains more pounds.
Fast foods have negative effects on your body as it can
affect your mood, blood pressure, make you bloated, raise your cholesterol,
shortened breath, can make you feel depressed, and gain weight quickly through
the many calories they contain. The calories can clog up arteries and veins
which could then lead to a bypass surgery. A bypass surgery is when doctors
take a segment of a vein from your leg and take out the clogged artery or vein
on the heart and replace it with the vein from the leg. This is bad because if
you have gotten the surgery that could mean you eat a lot of fat, and it could
have given you the heart attack that killed you.
As most of the people know now, fast food is made quickly
to please the costumers and their stomachs. But the way fast food is made, is
worse if you know what really goes on in the production of these foods. Fast
food comes from mass production factories, and the process to make the foods
includes adding many chemicals. But what is Food Processing? “Food processing is the transformation
of raw ingredients, by physical or chemical means into food, or of food into
other forms. Food processing combines raw food ingredients to produce
marketable food products that can be easily prepared and served by the
consumer. Food processing typically involves activities such as mincing and
macerating, liquefaction, cooking, canning or jarring (primary-processing such
as dicing or slicing, freezing or drying when leading to secondary products are
also included)”. That’s a lot that goes into just producing the foods, a lot of
the processes is very bad for you. In most of these processes chemicals are
added in so the foods can taste normal or better. Once all that is over, the
product is then frozen and shipped out to the buyers.
Healthy alternatives to eating fast foods could lead to a
healthier lifestyle. Instead of eating a burger at a fast food joint like
McDonalds, Burger king or Jack in the Box, you can pick up some fruits and
vegetables, or go to an organic market, and cook up something to eat in your
home. Homemade food is much healthier than eating out, because you know what is
going in to your stomach and what you’re eating. Some organic foods might be
pricey, but it’s always better eating healthy, than paying bills from the
hospital because of unhealthy eating habits.
Boyle, P, 2014 “Industrial
Meat” PBS March 11, 2015,
Wilson, T, (8/22/06) “How
Fast Food Works” How stuff works 3/6/2015 \
