NAMA : INDIRA SARI HANANTO
NPM : 13211582
KELAS : 4 EA 25
TULISAN SOFTSKILL
BAHASA INGGRIS BISNIS 2
“EATING JUNK FOOD”
Junk food is a pejorative term for food containing high levels of calories from sugar or fat with little protein, vitamins or minerals. Use of the term implies that a
particular food has little "nutritional value" and contains
excessive fat, sugar, salt,
and calories. Junk
food can also refer to high protein food containing large amounts of meat
prepared with, for example, too much unhealthy saturated fat many hamburger outlets, fried
chicken outlets and the like supply food considered junk food.
Despite being labeled as
"junk," such foods usually do not pose any immediate health concerns
and are generally safe when integrated into a well balanced diet. However, concerns about the negative
health effects resulting from the consumption of a "junk food"-heavy
diet have resulted in public health awareness campaigns, and restrictions
on advertising and sale in several countries.
What 5 Days of Junk Food Can Do
to Your Metabolism
By Dr. Mercola
If you overdo it on pizza,
macaroni and cheese, chips, and ice cream, you might worry about what it's
going to do to your thighs or mid-section. But binging on junk food isn't only
a matter of weight gain. It might have far more serious
repercussions than that.
People who ate
a diet focused on macaroni and cheese, processed lunchmeat, sausage biscuits,
mayonnaise, and microwavable meals with unhealthy fats, for example, showed
serious negative changes to their metabolism after just five days.
After eating the junk-food diet, the study
participants (12 healthy college-aged men) muscles' lost the ability to oxidize glucose after a meal,
which could lead to insulin resistance down the road.1
What Happens to Your Metabolism After Five Days of Junk Food
Even though
their caloric intake remained unchanged, when men ate a junk-food diet their
muscles' ability to oxidize glucose was disrupted in just five days' time. This
is a significant change, because muscle plays an important role in clearing
glucose from your body after a meal.
Under normal circumstances, your muscles will either
break down the glucose or store it for later use. Your muscles make up about 30
percent of your body weight, so if you lose this key player in glucose
metabolism it could pave the way for diabetes and other health problems.2 As reported by TIME:3
"'The normal response to a
meal was essentially either blunted or just not there after five days of high-fat feeding,' [Matthew] Hulver,
[PhD, department head of Human Nutrition, Food, and Exercise at Virginia Tech
Hulver] says.
Before going on a work-week's
worth of a fatty diet, when the men ate a normal meal they saw big increases in
oxidative targets four hours after eating.
That response was obliterated
after the five-day fat infusion. And under normal eating conditions, the
biopsied muscle used glucose as an energysource by oxidizing glucose.
'That was essentially wiped out after,' he says. 'We were surprised how robust
the effects were just with five days.'"
Just One Bad Meal Can Mess with Your Health
Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me was one of the first to vividly
demonstrate the consequences of trying to sustain yourself on a diet of fast
food. After just four weeks, Spurlock's health had deteriorated to the point
that his physician warned him he was putting his life in serious jeopardy if he
continued the experiment.
But as the featured study showed, it doesn't take a
virtual month to experience the health effects of a poor diet. In fact, the
changes happen after just one meal, according to research published in the Journal of the American College
ofCardiology.4
When you eat a
meal high in unhealthy fats and sugar, the sugar causes a large spike in your
blood-sugar levels called "post-prandial hyperglycemia." In the long
term this can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, but there are
short-term effects as well, such as:
·
Your tissue becomes inflamed (as occurs
when it is infected)
·
Your blood vessels constrict
·
Damaging free radicals are generated
·
Your blood pressure may rise higher than
normal
·
A surge and drop in insulin may leave
you feeling hungry soon after your meal
The good news is that eating a healthy meal helps your
body return to its normal, optimal state, even after just one. Study author
James O'Keefe of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri told TIME:5
"Your health and vigor, at
a very basic level, are as good as your last meal."
See Inside Your Stomach After a Meal of Instant Meals…
Dr. Braden Kuo of Massachusetts General Hospital used
a pill-sized camera to see what happens inside your stomach and digestive tract
after you eat ramen noodles, one common type of instant noodles. The results were astonishing…
In the video
above, you can see ramen noodles inside a stomach. Even after two hours, they
are remarkably intact, much more so than the homemade ramen noodles, which were
used as a comparison. This is concerning for a number of reasons.
For starters,
it could be putting a strain on your digestive system, which is forced to work
for hours to break down this highly processed food (ironically, most processed
food is so devoid of fiber that it gets broken down very quickly, interfering
with your blood sugar levels and insulin release).
When food
remains in your digestive tract for such a long time, it will also impact
nutrient absorption, but, in the case of processed ramen noodles, there isn't
much nutrition to be had. Instead, there is a long list of additives, including
the toxic preservative tertiary-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ).
This additive
will likely remain in your stomach along with the seemingly invincible noodles,
and no one knows what this extended exposure time may do to your health. Common
sense suggests it's not going to be good…
Eating Processed Foods Linked to Chronic Disease
Research published in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who consumed more
instant noodles had a significantly greater risk of metabolic syndrome than
those who ate less, regardless of their overall diet or exercise habits.6
Past research
also analyzed overall nutrient intake between instant-noodle consumers and
non-consumers, and found, as you might suspect, that eating instant noodles
contributes little value to a healthy diet.
The instant-noodle consumers had a significantly lower
intake of important nutrients like protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron,
potassium, vitamin A, niacin, and vitamin C compared
with non-consumers.7 Those who ate instant noodles also had
an excessive intake of energy, unhealthy fats, and sodium (just one package may
contain 2,700 milligrams of sodium).8
Not to
mention, refined carbohydrates like breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles,
pretzels, and most other processed foods quickly break down to sugar in your
body. This increases your insulin and leptin levels, and contributes to insulin
resistance, which is the primary underlying factor of nearly every chronic
disease and condition known to man, including weight gain.
Not only that, but remember… when you eat junk food
you are not just feeding yourself… you’re feeding your microbiome, too, and in so doing altering
its construction for better or worse. Your body’s diverse army of microbes is
responsible for many crucial biological processes, from immunity to memory to
mental health, so feeding it wisely, with fresh unprocessed and naturally
fermented foods, is crucial to your overall health and well-being.
Is Junk Food as Dangerous as Cigarettes?
In the US, about one-quarter to one-third of adults
fall into the obese category. A staggering two-thirds of Americans are
overweight, and poor diet is in large part to blame. Last year, UN Special
Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said that "obesity
is a bigger global health threat than tobacco use," and that this fact
isn't taken as seriously as it should be. His statements were delivered at the
opening of the 2014 World Health Organization's annual summit. De Schutter ultimately
wants nations to join forces to place stricter regulations on unhealthy foods:9
"Just as the world came
together to regulate the risks of tobacco, a bold framework convention on
adequate diets must now be agreed," he said. 'The Special Rapporteur has previously agitated for greater
governmental action on junk foods, including taxing unhealthy products,
regulating fats and sugars, cracking down on advertising for junk food, and
rethinking agricultural subsidies that make unhealthy food cheaper,' Time
Magazine noted. 'Governments have been focusing on increasing calorie
availability,' he said, 'but they have often been indifferent to what kind of
calories are offered, at what price, to whom they are made available, and how
they are marketed.'"
The idea that being overweight can be more harmful
than smoking is
likely to make many balk, considering how "normal" it has become to
carry around extra pounds, but in terms of overall health effects and
subsequent health care costs, it's likely true. For example, data collected
from over 60,000 Canadians show that obesity leads to more doctor visits than
smoking.10
Further, according to a report by The McKinsey Global
Institute, the global cost of obesity is now $2 trillion annually, which is
nearly as much as the global cost of smoking ($2.1 trillion) and armed violence
(including war and terrorism, which also has a global cost of $2.1 trillion).11 For comparison, alcoholism costs are
$1.4 trillion annually, road accidents cost $700 billion, and unsafe sex costs
$300 billion. What's more, if current trends continue, the McKinsey report estimates
that nearly half of the world's adult population will be overweight or obese by
2030.
Junk Food Is Incredibly Addictive
Your body is
designed to naturally regulate how much you eat and the energy you burn. But
food manufacturers have figured out how to over-ride these intrinsic
regulators, designing processed foods that are engineered to be
"hyper-rewarding." According to the "food reward hypothesis of
obesity," processed foods stimulate such a strong reward response in our brains
that it becomes very easy to overeat. One of the guiding principles for the
processed food industry is known as "sensory-specific satiety."
Investigative reporter Michael Moss describes this as
"the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm your brain."12 The greatest successes, whether
beverages or foods, owe their "craveability" to complex formulas that
pique your taste buds just enough, without overwhelming them, thereby
overriding your brain's inclination to say "enough." In all, potato
chips are among the most addictive junk foods on the market, containing all
three "bliss-inducing" ingredients: sugar (from the potato), salt,
and fat. Further, as reported by TIME:13
"Studies suggest that
fatty, sugary foods promote excretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which
seems to further stimulate appetite for calorie-dense foods. And the big
post-meal spikes in blood sugar are more likely in people who don't exercise or
those who carry weight around their abdomen. All of it makes it tough for
people to stop eating junk food once they're in the habit. 'The more you eat it
the more you crave it. It becomes a vicious cycle,' says O'Keefe."
And while food companies abhor the word
"addiction" in reference to their products, scientists have
discovered that sugar, in particular, is just that. In fact, sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Research
published in 2007 showed that 94 percent of rats that were allowed to choose
mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, majority chose sugar.14 Even rats that were addicted to
cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a
choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.
The
researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located
on the tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in
sugar, have not adapted to modern times' high-sugar consumption. Therefore, the
abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets generates
excessive reward signals in your brain, which have the potential to override
normal self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction.
Does Junk Food Have a Hold on You? How to Break Free
Replacing processed foods with homemade meals made
from scratch using whole ingredients is an ideal and important way to ensure
optimal nutrition. This will automatically cut out the vast majority of refined
sugars, processed fructose, preservatives, dyes,
other nasty chemicals, and many addictive ingredients from your diet. This will
allow your body to depend less on sugar and more on fat as its primary
fuel—provided you eat enough healthy fat, that is.
As a result, you will no longer crave sugar to keep
you going. The key elements for a healthy diet that can help kick your junk
food cravings to the curb are the following. For a comprehensive guide, please
see my free optimized nutrition plan:
·
Avoiding refined sugar, processed
fructose, grains, and processed foods
·
Eating a healthy diet of whole foods,
ideally organic, and replacing the carbs you eliminate with:
o
As much high-quality healthy fat as you
want (saturated and monounsaturated). Many would benefit from getting as much
as 50-85 percent of their daily calories from healthy fats. While this may
sound like a lot, consider that, in terms of volume, the
largest portion of your plate would be vegetables, since they contain so few calories.
Fat, on the
other hand, tends to be very high in calories. For example, just one tablespoon
of coconut oil is about 130 calories—all of it from healthy fat. Good sources
include:
|
Olives
and olive oil
|
Coconuts
and coconut oil
|
Butter
made from raw grass-fed organic milk
|
|
Organic
raw nuts, especially macadamia nuts, which are low in protein and omega-6 fat
|
Organic
pastured egg yolks and pastured meats
|
o Large
amounts of high-quality organic, locally grown vegetables, fermented
vegetables, and ideally sprouts grown at your home
o Low-to-moderate
amount of high-quality protein (think organically raised, pastured animals, or
eggs)
Planning Your Meals Is Key
Ditching processed foods requires that you plan your
meals in advance, but if you take it step-by-step as described in mynutrition
plan, it's quite possible, and manageable, to painlessly remove
processed foods from your diet. You can try scouting out your local farmer's
markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals
accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You
can generally plan a week of meals at a time, making sure you have all
ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time
so that dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time (and you can use
leftovers for lunches the next day).
Finally, if you're an emotional eater, I highly
recommend using the Emotional Freedom
Technique (EFT). EFT is simple and effective, and can rapidly help
you eliminate your food cravings naturally.
What Happens to Your Brain When You
Eat Junk Food (And Why We Crave It)
By JAMES CLEAR
Most of us know that junk food is unhealthy. We know that poor
nutrition is related to heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of
other health ailments. You might even know that studies show that eating junk
food has been linked to increases in depression.
But
if it’s so bad for us, why do we keep doing it?
There is an answer. And the science
behind it will surprise you.
Why We Crave
Junk Food
Steven Witherly is a food scientist
who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes certain foods more addictive (and tasty) than others.
Much of the science that follows is from his excellent report, Why
Humans Like Junk Food.
According
to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the
experience pleasurable.
First,
there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like
(salty, sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your
mouth. This last quality — known as “orosensation” — can be particularly
important. Food companies will spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in
a potato chip. Their scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a
soda. These factors all combine to create the sensation that your brain
associates with a particular food or drink.
The
second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the
food — the blend of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the
case of junk food, food manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of
salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and gets you coming back for more.
Here’s
how they do it…
How Science
Creates Cravings
There
are a range of factors that scientists and food manufacturers use to make food
more addictive.
Dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast refers to a
combination of different sensations in the same food. In the words of Witherly,
foods with dynamic contrast have “an edible shell that goes crunch followed by
something soft or creamy and full of taste-active compounds. This rule applies
to a variety of our favorite food structures — the caramelized top of a creme
brulee, a slice of pizza, or an Oreo cookie — the brain finds crunching through
something like this very novel and thrilling.”
Salivary response. Salivation is part of the experience
of eating food and the more that a food causes you to salivate, the more it
will swim throughout your mouth and cover your
taste buds. For example, emulsified foods like butter, chocolate,
salad dressing, ice cream, and mayonnaise promote a salivary response that
helps to lather your taste buds with goodness. This is one reason why many
people enjoy foods that have sauces or glazes on them. The result is that foods
that promote salivation do a happy little tap dance on your brain and taste
better than ones that don’t.
Rapid food meltdown and
vanishing caloric density. Foods
that rapidly vanish or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re
not eating as much as you actually are. In other words, these foods literally
tell your brain that you’re not full, even though you’re eating a lot of
calories.
The
result: you tend to overeat.
In his best-selling book, Salt Sugar Fat, author Michael Moss describes a conversation with
Witherly that explains vanishing caloric density perfectly…
I
brought him two shopping bags filled
with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,”
Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet,
in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos
that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s
uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,”
Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s
no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.”
Sensory specific response. Your brain likes variety. When it
comes to food, if you experience the same taste over and over again, then you
start to get less pleasure from it. In other words, the sensitivity of that
specific sensor will decrease over time. This can happen in just minutes.
Junk
foods, however, are designed to avoid this sensory specific response. They
provide enough taste to be interesting (your brain doesn’t get tired of eating
them), but it’s not so stimulating that your sensory response is dulled. This
is why you can swallow an entire bag of potato chips and still be ready to eat
another. To your brain, the crunch and sensation of eating Doritos is novel and
interesting every time.
Calorie density. Junk foods are designed to convince
your brain that it is getting nutrition, but to not fill you up. Receptors in
your mouth and stomach tell your brain about the mixture of
proteins, fats, carbohydrates in a particular food, and how filling that food
is for your body. Junk food provides just enough calories that your brain says,
“Yes, this will give you some energy” but not so many calories that you think “That’s
enough, I’m full.” The result is that you crave the food to begin with, but it
takes quite some time to feel full from it.
Memories of past eating
experiences. This
is where the psychobiology of junk food really works against you. When you eat
something tasty (say, a bag of potato chips), your brain registers that
feeling. The next time you see that food, smell that food, or even read about
that food, your brain starts to trigger the memories and responses that came
when you ate it. These memories can actually cause physical responses like
salivation and create the “mouth-watering” craving that you get when thinking about
your favorite foods.
All
of this brings us to the most important question of all.
Food
companies are spending millions of dollars to design foods with addictive
sensations. What can you and I do about it? Is there any way to counteract the
money, the science, and the advertising behind the junk food industry?
How to Kick the
Junk Food Habit and Eat Healthy
The
good news is that the research shows that the less junk food you eat, the less
you crave it. My own experiences have mirrored this. As I’ve slowly begun to
eat healthier, I’ve noticed myself wanting pizza and candy and ice cream less
and less. Some people refer to this transition period as “gene reprogramming.”
Whatever
you want to call it, the lesson is the same: if you can find ways to gradually
eat healthier, you’ll start to experience the cravings of junk food less and
less. I’ve never claimed to have all the answers (or any, really), but here are
three strategies that might help.
1. Use the “outer ring”
strategy and the “5 ingredient rule” to buy healthier food.
The
best course of action is to avoid buying processed and packaged foods. If you
don’t own it, you can’t eat it. Furthermore, if you don’t think about it, you
can’t be lured by it.
We’ve
talked about the power of junk food to pull you in and how memories of tasty
food in the past can cause you to crave more of it in the future. Obviously,
you can’t prevent yourself from ever thinking about junk food, but there are
ways to reduce your cravings.
First, you can use my “outer ring” strategy to
avoid processed and packaged foods at the grocery store. If you limit yourself
to purchasing foods that are on the outer ring of the store, then you will
generally buy whole foods (fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, etc.). Not
everything on the outer ring is healthy, but you will avoid a lot of unhealthy
foods.
You
can also follow the “5 ingredient rule” when buying foods at the store. If
something has more than 5 ingredients in it, don’t buy it. Odds are, it has
been designed to fool you into eating more of it. Avoid those products and
stick with the more natural options.
2. Eat a variety of foods.
As
we covered earlier, the brain craves novelty.
While
you may not be able to replicate the crunchy/creamy contrast of an Oreo, you
can vary your diet enough to keep things interesting. For example, you could
dip a carrot (crunchy) in some hummus (creamy) and get a novel sensation.
Similarly, finding ways to add new spices and flavors to your dishes can make
eating healthy foods a more desirable experience.
Moral of the story: eating healthy
doesn’t have to be bland. Mix up your foods to get different sensations and you
may find it easier than eating the same foods over and over again. (At some
point, however, you may have to fall in love with boredom.)
3. Find a better way to deal
with your stress.
There’s
a reason why many people eat as a way to cope with stress. Stress causes
certain regions of the brain to release chemicals (specifically, opiates and
neuropeptide Y). These chemicals can trigger mechanisms that are similar to the
cravings you get from fat and sugar. In other words, when you get stressed,
your brain feels the addictive call of fat and sugar and you’re pulled back to
junk food.
We all have stressful situations that
arise in our lives. Learning to deal with stress in a different way can help
you overcome the addictive pull of junk food. This could includesimple
breathing techniques or
a short
guided meditation. Or something more physical like exercise or making art.
With that said, if you’re looking for
a better written and more detailed analysis of the science of junk food, I
recommend reading the #1 New York Times best-seller, Salt Sugar Fat.
Where to Go From
Here
One
of my goals with this article is to reveal just how complex poor eating habits
can be. Junk food is designed to keep you coming back for more. Telling people
that they “need more willpower” or should “just stop eating crap” is
short-sighted at best.
Understanding the science behind junk
food is an important first step, but I don’t want you to stop there. I wrote a
free 46-page guide called Transform Your Habits,
which explains strategies for winning the battle against junk food and
improving your eating habits.
REFERENSI :
http://jamesclear.com/junk-food-science
