Food Addiction? The idea that a person can be addicted to food has recently gotten more support from science. Experiments in animals and humans show that, for some people, the same reward and pleasure centers of the brain that are triggered by addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin are also activated by food, especially highly palatable foods. Highly palatable foods are foods rich in sugar and fat. Like addictive drugs, highly palatable foods trigger feel-good brain chemicals such as dopamine. Once people experience pleasure associated with increased dopamine transmission in the brain’s reward pathway from eating certain foods, they quickly feel the need to eat again.
Genetically Modified foods? This started in the 1940’s as crossbreeding plants to produce higher yields and better quality. Now scientists are combining the genes of plants and completely unrelated species such as bacteria to make crops produce their own insecticide. I certainly don’t agree because it’s harmful to environment, Harmful to humans, Give rise to ‘super weeds’, ‘Super weeds’ dominate the fields and affect main crops and Genes from the genetically modified food could be transferred to the pests which can make them become resistant to the pesticides and the pesticides become useless.
Socio-economical status? This question brings me back to the Cheetos and roach example from the video. Many cultures believe the roach is a food while the Cheetos isn’t and vice versa. Its about how and where we were raised. Alot of people go for what tastes good without looking at the health aspect of it. But most of all the prices on healthy food has gone up while the prices on unhealthy food has decreased, I don’t know why that is but it is and then society wonders why obesity has increased, maybe its because salads are $7 and burgers are $1, this needs to change!
Psychological Factors? People are not as concerned as they used to be about where there food comes from. Mass media; eating disorders said to be made more common by the peer pressure put on by skinny role models and the constant flow of quick fix diets offered daily in magazines and newspapers.
Constant adverts telling you that your body needs the product to remain healthy, meanwhile to them its more about how you look then the health part of it. This brings me back to the video when the fourth meal of taco bell was mentioned.
What represents the most serious health risk outside the US? Overnutrition and obesity.
What’s the main problem with too many ingredients? Studies show that if a product contains fewer than three ingredients, you’re less apt to overeat. If we are eating the same thing day after day with the same ingredients, we’d have too many of some nutrients and too little of others, we’d become nutritionally diffident.
Why would you like ice cream better than cauliflower? Cauliflower has some nutrients that are important but ice cream has ‘immediate value’ because of the energy it gives us. Its tastes good too, most of us go for what taste good instead of the nutrition facts. But me personally, am not much of an ice cream person, so I’ll probably pick the cauliflower.
Should taxation influence the quality of food we eat? This brings me back to example i gave of the salad being $7 dollars and the burger being $1. Lowering tax on healthy food and higher for unhealthy food may help us eat healthier. Maybe that would be the start on decreasing obesity and health risks.
