ByOnlinecourses55
Food system crisis - nutrition
Today we live in a reality where a wide variety of foods abound that, although delicious, are harmful to our health. We have allowed the trade of harmful foods to become normalized. While we focus on protecting children from tobacco, we often ignore the fact that they are consuming products that could be responsible for many diseases in their future.
In countries like the United States, obesity is an alarming problem that claims many lives each year. What is most disturbing is that no one seems to be interested in addressing this underlying problem. The companies behind the production of these products, if we can even call them food, spend millions of dollars annually to distract us from the fact of how much sugar is in a soft drink or how much saturated fat is in "fast food".
An inadequate diet, which does not provide the essential nutrients for the human body, has become such a serious problem that it has led several universities to study its effects. Research has produced alarming results: poor diet causes more deaths per year than smoking, hypertension or even environmental pollution. This fact should make us seriously rethink our eating habits.
Although we live in the information age, where we have access to countless resources on nutrition and healthy living, we face powerful obstacles. The companies that dominate the junk food market generate millions at the expense of our health. Although there are numerous scientific studies that prove the dangers of certain foods, the idea of changing the formulas of these products seems a titanic task.
The panorama is really complicated. Some of the foods we find on the market should not even be sold. The nutritional labels of certain products are a joke in terms of nutrition. The excess sugar in soft drinks is harmful, while the sodium and saturated fats present in fast food are the cause of multiple cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, among others.
However, all is not lost. New trends in nutrition bring some hope.
In recent years, we have seen a boom in healthier eating trends, especially in more developed countries. Increasingly, the ethics of some companies that, despite scientific evidence, continue to sell harmful products are being questioned. The battle against sugar has driven new entrepreneurs to look for healthier alternatives to sweeten their products. Also, the consumption of foods low in sodium and saturated fats has gained popularity, and more people recognize the importance of making conscious choices about what we consume.
We are at a crossroads. Harmful products continue to exist because there are companies that produce them, and those companies produce them because there are consumers who buy them. Fortunately, bringing a new product to market with the hallmark of being healthy and tasty is now an advantage. This has led entrepreneurs to innovate and develop healthier formulas. However, companies that manufacture unhealthy foods continue to generate large revenues and show no signs of changing their recipes. Therefore, we have only one option left: to continue educating and informing so that more people choose a healthy lifestyle.
