All about choices

I remembered when I told my friends that I was coming to the States to study, the first thing they warned me was not to get into the American eating life style. As I am learning more in this class, I understand the significance of what my friend had told me. In America, everything is “supersized” compared to Hong Kong. The large soda cup is the small/medium size here. I have never seen such big packs of chips before I arrived in America’s supermarket. To me it seems like everything is over sized. Thus, this is very closely connected to American eating habits. I think that it’s partially true that most people do not think too much about what they eat as long as it tastes good. However, it’s understandable because a lot of people do not have the money to eat food that is healthy and tastes good, so they just find food that tastes good. Also, the nutrition in the food may not be the first thing that comes through their heads when choosing their three meals. When it comes down to survival and health, I do believe a lot of people will choose survival over health. Counting out the poor people who cannot afford to choose, the middle class who have the money to choose might not have the time to choose because of their busy work. According to The Telegraph, most British office workers prefer to have take away lunch meals that they eat at their desks. From this, one can see that Fast Food becomes almost the perfect choice. In short, I think sometimes it’s not that people don’t think about what they eat, it is that they don’t have other choices because of many other factors. On the other hand, I do believe there are people who think about what they eat. The trend of people turning towards organic food is a very obvious evident that proves that people do care more than just taste. There is a group of people who think about the nutrition in the food and what they are putting into their bodies.
Based on what I have read and seen in class, I think some of the larger ramifications of the unhealthy choices people make in choosing what they eat are obesity, more health issues, and heavier tax burden on tax payers. Obesity is a very huge issue in America, 32.3% of adult Americans are obese, and that is 90 millions of the adult American population. Together with such a high statistic comes along with health issues. Being obese have a much higher risk of getting all kinds of sicknesses, and they would need to hospitalize, which means tax payers have to pay more for their health care. These bad choices only comes back to the Americans, thus, this will only be a vicious, never ending cycle.

Source:
http://www.professorshouse.com/Health-Beauty/Nutrition/Articles/Percent-of-Americans-Who-are-Obese/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4245249/British-officer-workers-no-longer-take-lunch-breaks.html