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Essay on The American Diet

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Most Americans do not care enough to take a look at the nutritional values of the food that he or she is consuming. That is why America has the highest percentage of obesity in the world. This is a serious problem because one in every three adults is obese, and one in every six children is obese. There are many factors that go into the regular American diet, but most of those factors are not appealing nor is it healthy. Americans put way too much processed food into their daily diet. Some would say that other countries diets superior the American diet because of nutritional values that it carries. Other countries have proven that an active lifestyle is a huge element in the average weight of the country. There are many things that …show more content…

Farmers need their cows to be tremendously obese because the cows would produce more meat for the farmers to sell. Therefore, the meat that is sold at the supermarket is not one hundred percent natural. Another manufactured substance is sugar also referred to as high-fructose corn syrup. Man has made a whole new variation of sugar that is cheaper to produce but also completely artificial. “Using a glucose isomerase, the starch in corn can be efficiently converted to glucose and then to various amounts of fructose. The hydrolysis of sucrose produces a 50:50 molar mixture of fructose and glucose. The development of these inexpensive, sweet corn- based syrups made it profitable to replace sucrose (sugar) and simple sugars with HFCS in our diet, and they now represent 40% of all added caloric sweeteners. (Bray, Nielsen, and Popkin)” The United States farmer produces approximately twelve billion bushels of corn every year, but only exports about twenty percent of the total, and the rest is made into products, such as high-fructose corn syrup. All of the processed food is extremely bad for our health, but since it is the cheapest in the supermarket it would take a lot to have a healthier diet. Other countries, such as Asia, have proven that their diet is healthier than that of an American. “The structure of South Korea’s economy, along with the country’s dietary and disease patterns, began an accelerated shift in the 1970s. Major dietary

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