What is in your food?

Fat, sugar and salt; three vital ingredients that make the food indulging. Constantly, consumers have to choose between eating healthy or eating junk food. The food industry has figured out the way to make a consumer vulnerable to eating more. The recipe calls for the perfect ratio balance of sugar to salt to fat. Salads have been known to be a healthy alternative to junk food. However, now our salads are betraying us. From the ranch dressing, the cheese chunks to the bacon bits, it is nothing but a pathway for unhealthy fat. The fast food industry tricks our brain to make us crave the junk food more.  

Before I talk about the methods and the solutions, I would like to start off by introducing the concept behind Obesity and Overweight. Overweight is when an individual's BMI is high, whereas, Obese people are very overweight. Obesity can potentially endanger an individual's organs as it can cause fatal disease: Heart diseases, Type 2 Diabetes, Cancer, High cholesterol and much more. In the United States of America, 1/3 of the adults are overweight, and another 1/3 are obese. According to WHO, 13% of the adults in the world were obese (2014). Also in 2013, 42 million children under the age of 5 were either obese or overweight. As expected the cause this was an increased consumption of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt. Since, this an immense issue, scientist and doctors have found solutions for it.  For instance, NPS MEDICINEWISE, suggests that we should cut down our high sugar drinks and start portioning our foods. I might not have mentioned it before, but the extra energy collected in an individual's body gets stored as fat.

Often people think that consuming sugar, fat and salt is bad for an individual's health, and try not to eat it. Carbohydrates (release energy from sugar) can be either good or bad. It depends on how it enters someone’s body. Pritikin (website on healthy living), says that good carbs are: “High in nutrients, and, low in saturated fat and sodium. However, carbs that are not good for your body would come from refined sugar, such as corn syrup or even honey.” The three vital ingredients can be found in anything, like Ketchup, Bread, Crackers and much more. How do these components make us eat more?  Based on the article about taste buds on Kidshealth.com, “Taste buds have very sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli. Those tiny hairs send messages to the brain about how something tastes, so you know if it is sweet, sour, bitter, or salty.” The neurones in the human’s taste buds will start to fire when in contact with food. The stronger the stimuli or the taste, the more neurons fired. Most human beings and animals crave a variety of dishes, from sweet to savoury to bitter. However, high-sugar and high-fat food will channel our reward centre into thinking that this is the best food.  According to David. A Kessler, the neurons in our brains release opioids. That chemical makes us feel pleasure, thus making us indulging in the food more. As a whole, we should not avoid consuming sugar, fat or salt as it beneficial for our health. Instead, we should know what form of the sugar, fat and salt are good. For instance, Healthychildren.org, states that fat is essential to form of energy/calories which help us grow. However, nutritious fat is found in “Fish, Poultry and lean meat (broiled, baked, or roasted; not fried).” The meat found in fast foods is not nutritious as it has been fried many times. The same theory is applied for sugar.

Artificial ingredients are often found in many foods that we consume in our daily life. It can vary from cheese to chickens to eggs. Canthaxanthin is a chemical compound used to make the egg yolks have a golden/yellow colour. Once this has been inserted the egg is no longer natural, furthermore large amounts of this could damage the eye's retina. Where else, others like Kantha Shelke, a Ph.D. would say that most people follow the norm of not eating it unless it is pronounceable. She wants us to educate ourselves and learn about the ingredients. “Take riboflavin, cobalamin, and pyridoxamine. They are big words and sound like things you do not want in your food, but they are all forms of vitamin B, and skipping them can be detrimental to your health,” she mentioned.

As a conclusion, many factors can tame your brain into eating more. However, at the end, we are responsible for what we eat. Have you ever wondered what makes a burger, chocolates, or fries, so irresistible? The food companies would claim that it is the fresh ingredients, but it all lies in the hand of salt, sugar and fat.