By FEAR CHURCHWELL – Web Writer
“We are overfed but undernourished. As a whole, we are starving on a nutritional level.”
When you hear the phrase “world hunger”, people most likely think of countries like India or Haiti, but do people ever consider the United States? Although many Americans may consume a vast amount of food, they do not receive the correct nutrients needed for their bodies to function properly.
Food in the United States may be plentiful, comforting and enough to feed the country, but we aren’t filling ourselves with the right kind of food. Americans take shortcuts and eat more artificial meals than ever before. As a result, 40 percent of them are obese.
One reason of the increase in the obesity rate is the amount of prepackaged foods Americans consume. In fact, packaged foods deprive us of the nutrients we need for our bodies to function properly. Prepackaged foods have added sugar and salt along with additives to addict the consumer to that specific product. Although these additives tend to give products longer shelf life, it is not to the benefit of our health.
The increased intake of processed food, decreases the amount of nutrients that the body needs. As a result, the body can malfunction due to a lack of nutrients.
For example, a lack of Vitamin D consumption can lead to muscle and bone diseases such as osteoporosis, a disease that brings low density to your bones. As a result, the bones are more fragile and likely to break easier.
Many Americans become concerned with their health and the food that they consume. As a result, many Americans attempt a diet. Although this may sound promising at first, 90 percent of all American diets attempts fail.
In fact, many dieters gain more weight after the diet than they had in the first place.
These diets typically fail because Americans are not properly educated on what they are eating, and are unaware of many additives or sugars to avoid when choosing diets.
Another way American diets do not seem to work is Americans do not properly manage the type of food they are consuming.
Unfortunately, Americans’ malnutrition not only affects themselves, but also the next generation. Parents have a great influence on their children’s lives, as well as their eating habits. The United States is at the point in which one in every five children under the age of four is obese.The American diet is contagious and this issue is not going away without a drastic change.
