Are we becoming a fastfood nation? (EN)

In today’s world everywhere you look, you can see fat people and doctors, TV programmes and specialists discussing or trying to solve this problem. Do you ever ask yourself how we ended up like this? It is partly understandable when adults above 40 years are obese, but how is it possible that so many children are obese as well?

Well, during a few last decades the people’s awareness of the healthy lifestyle has had rapidly decreasing tendency which can be also caused by political and socio-economic changes in western societies. People have been facing globalization and the lifestyle of an average person has changed a lot.

What are the consequences of globalization? The richest companies from the world’s most powerful countries began to export their products into the countries that hadn’t been under their influence before (such as ex-communist countries like Slovakia) and started expanding their business. Very good examples are the US companies such as Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, followed by many similar companies.

Fastfoods became very popular in these countries thanks to their low prices and acceptable taste of their food. Unfortunately, many people don’t know or even care what this ‘food’ really consists of. And this is the main cause of obesity in the world.

This fastfood is actually a mixture of sugars, fats, emulsifiers, gluten, waste meat products and much other disgusting rubbish that you wouldn’t eat if it didn’t have the smell, taste and look of a fastfood meal. These things obstruct your intestine so it’s unable to absorb nutrients. They rapidly increase sugar level in your blood for a short moment, then it decreases back to low level and you feel hungry again. This is the consequence of their high glycemic index (GI). They also contain a huge amount of useless lipids and saccharides which our body cannot burn so it stores it in form of fat. These mentioned substances also cause violation of the acid-base balance in our body and in may have as a consequence many different diseases – including obesity.

People should take more care of their health. The healthy food is often more expensive that the junk food, but it’s cheaper and more comfortable than buying medicine to cure illnesses caused by inappropriate lifestyle. Live healthy, change your lifestyle and start with your diet – if you haven’t done it yet.

Kristen