Fatal Food

America today is dependent on convenience, it seems as though our lives revolve around convenient products. We have fast food, delivery services for almost anything you can imagine, pre-packaged dishwashing detergent, cell phones, PDA’s, and so many more products that were designed to help us out. But it seems that all these pre packaged conveniences come at a price. Cancer rates are on the rise, possibly due to the excessive use of cell phones? Cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes type 2 and other health problems are on the rise as well which, most likely, are due to the new found eating habits of Americans. In this essay I will focus on families, how families are eating an America and what it is doing to our youth. It shocks me when I look around at families and how parents are so blind to the fact that what they feed their children is actually killing them slowly. I see parents at the grocery store buying sodas, sugared cereals, potato chips, macaroni and cheese, and other sugar and fat filled foods for their children. Meanwhile the kids sit home on the couch watching TV or playing video games. Childhood obesity is on the rise in America, it is estimated that between 5 and 25% of children and teenagers are obese! What is wrong with this picture? These foods that target children are making their way into the home and making our children fat! So how do we as a community begin to remedy this horrible situation? I feel that it begins in our home. I myself do not have any children so I can’t say how easy it would be, but my sister is my hero in regards to how to feed children. When her first son was born, doctors discovered that he had asthma and would need to be on steroids and other medications possibly for the rest of his life. It was torturous to watch this innocent child be treated with these steroids that were inhaled through a mask that we had to hold on his face while he screamed and squirmed around trying to get away from it. My sister made a life changing decision during that time, she believed that if she could figure out what flared up his asthma, feed him healthy, nutritious foods, and take him to a naturopathic doctor to help minimize the asthma, he would be a much healthier, happier child. So the journey toward a healthier lifestyle began, she started shopping at natural foods stores, and figuring out what effect some foods had on his health, she discovered that he was allergic to wheat and dairy products which flared his asthma and kept him away from those foods, and he responded very well. To make a long story shorter, my sisters oldest is now seven years old, off of medications, and very rarely shows any symptoms of asthma, and her two younger children are five and three and are all very healthy and even at those young ages, they themselves make wise food decisions! All of this because she made the decision to feed her children for their long term well-being. My sister lives in town and runs an organic produce co-op which has been growing the past couple of years and she has been able to share her story with many other families who follow in her footsteps. I feel that if we can all make the decision that we want to live longer healthier lives, invest slightly more time into making nutritious meals for our families, we will benefit immensely. Our children will be of healthy weight, make wise choices on their own, and
possibly impact those around them.


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