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The Future of Food, Starting Today
"As life and the stress of high school, friends, parents, and masses of homework worsened, so did my diet."
By Jennifer Miller
It’s 10:30 in the morning at my school, which means I get an extra five minutes of passing period for a “snack break” and I’m hungry.
Like every other day I was too slow getting out of the house and didn’t have time to grab something to eat. In my search for food, I have a few sad options. I can go to our school’s snack bar and choose from an assortment of equally disturbing food. This probably has something to do with the number of overweight youth tripling since the 1980’s. There are your classic cheese fries, a variety of differently flavored chips, and a couple types of cookies. There’s no soda because it was banned in public schools when I was in junior high, so instead we have these “juice drinks” which usually contain about 2 percent juice. Wow.
If I’m not feeling any of my choices, I can always go across the street where there’s a Burger King, McDonalds and of course, what would life be like without a donut shop? What if I wanted to eat something with some nutritional value? Even if I did have the time, never mind the energy to walk somewhere for some real, unprocessed, preservative-free food, I don’t have the money to cash out for such things on a regular basis, and neither do most of my peers.
I used to pride myself in my quasi-health consciousness. I mean, nobody’s perfect- everyone craves some junk every now and then. But for the most part I would take the time to eat some cereal in morning, make a sandwich for lunch and fix something for dinner. As life and the stress of high school, friends, parents, and masses of homework worsened, so did my diet.
It’s hard to eat healthy when you’re on the run, especially when surrounded by so many fast food restaurants and corner stores. However, it’s important to pay attention to what you put in your body because most people who become overweight or obese as children stay that way throughout their whole life, increasing their chances for high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancer.
It’s not that kids don’t want to eat healthy. I’m sure if they had the option of eating an apple or a banana at snack time or lunch, they’d go for it. Schools should have healthy foods and snacks for students to promote healthy eating at a young age so that it lasts as we grow.
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