Short Essay5
Irregular Breakfast Eating
Do you know how long it is been since your
last breakfast? Many college students spend their morning like this: after
their alarm clocks wake them up, they always struggle for ten or twenty
minutes; they rub their tired and sleepy eyes, getting up out of their bed.
Because every second counts, some students rush out of their dormitory without
breakfast. The other students, who remind themselves to eat breakfast, always
open their empty refrigerator and then close it, rushing off to class.
A study of Krisha Thiagaraja and Mohammad
R.Torabi indicates that about 37.2% of young people between 19 and 29 years of
age seldom eat breakfast. Most of these young people said the main reasons for
not eating breakfast was they do not have enough time (64%) and the others said
they did not feel hungry in the morning (30.3%) (9). Indeed, irregular
breakfast eating or always skipping breakfast is always associated with being
overweight, the low frequency of health promoting behavior, and even high
possibility of cardiometabolic risk.
In their study, irregular breakfast eating
and health status among adolescents in Taiwan, Rea-Jeng, Edward K Wang, et.al. investigate
1,609 adolescents and come to the conclusion that irregular breakfast eating is
connected to being overweight. Among the total participant students, “28.8%
were overweight and nearly one quarter (23.6%) reported eating breakfast
irregularly during schooldays” (7). Skipping breakfast is common for students
during schooldays and they often eat high calorie and unhealthy snacks during
break. Comparing the overweight rate between students who have regular
breakfast eating and those who have irregular breakfast eating, their findings
show that students with regular breakfast eating had a lower risk of being
overweight due to less snacks eaten between meals.
Many studies show that skipping breakfast
is widespread among college students, which is also an indicator of health
promoting behavior. Krisha Thiagarajah and Mohammad R. Torabi did a study called
“Irregular Breakfast Eating and Associated Health Behaviors” in 2009. They
investigated 1,257 college students in a Midwestern university in the U.S.A,
and found nearly one-fifth of them stated that they never ate breakfast (4). Compared
to regular breakfast eaters, their logical analysis indicates that students who
always skip breakfast are more likely to sleep 5.5 hours or less. “Sleep
deprivation would have caused them to be tired the next morning and, thus, lead
to skipping breakfast” (5). Not only that, breakfast skippers are less likely
to work out in contrast to those non-skippers, since eating breakfast can
improve the energy intake to do extra physical activities. Moreover, students
who always skip breakfast have a high consumption of soda and other sugared
beverages. Similar to some breakfast skippers who nibble snakes between meals,
some others have to compensate their calories from the non-nutritive beverages
(9). Eating breakfast, thus, is associated with healthy behavior.
If the potential
possibility of obesity and the short-term unhealthy lifestyle does not catch
your attention due to your academic pressure, a longitudinal study about the
relationship between cardiometabolic risk and skipping breakfast has to get
your attention. Kylie J Smith, et.al. conclude that to promote breakfast eating
is an important public health message on account of cardiometabolic health (1).
They found that people who skipped breakfast in adulthood but not in childhood
are similar to those who skipped breakfast at both time. For instance, most of
them have higher insulin and LDL cholesterol concentrations, which are
contributors to detrimental effects on cardiometabolic health, than regular
breakfast eaters. Their study shows that eating breakfast is a persistent factor
in your daily life. The cardiometabolic rick will directly influence your diet
quality in the future.
Among the three studies,
the key solution to promote college students to eat breakfast is to propose a
healthy lifestyle among youth. Yang and Wang believe that college has the main
duty to influence students and families’ attitudes regarding healthy breakfast
and exercise. To encourage students and staff have time to eat breakfast
regularly should be considered a significant health promotion strategy on a
university campus. They could decrease breakfast skippers through providing
quick and nutritious food (9). However, the body is one’s own. Don’t forget you
are in charge of yourself. A good suggestion or always the first food you
should eat for breakfast is a cup of cereal with skim milk. For starters of
breakfast eating, a cup of cereal is quick, always less than five minutes to
prepare, and healthy, because it has fiber to lower cholesterol. For girls who
always worry about their weight, skim milk also help you to lose weight.
It
is widely accepted that breakfast is the most important meal of the day,
especially during growth. Regular breakfast eating is a crucial indicator of a
healthy lifestyle and healthy physical and mental status, because it provides
people the daily supply of nutrients. Whether you are a student or an office
worker, to get up early every day for 15 minutes and to enjoy a good breakfast
should be one of the “required courses” in daily life. To develop a habit
usually takes 21 days. Thus, why not try to set your alarm clock and to get up
early for 15 minutes tomorrow and to enjoy a nutrient breakfast? Eating
breakfast is a good beginning to develop a healthy lifestyle because paying
attention to your health is always the best investment.
Work Cited
Yang, Rea-Jeng, Edward K Wang, Yue-Sheng
Hsieh, and Mei-Yen Chen. “Irregular
breakfast
eating and health status among adolescens in Taiwan.” BMC Public
Health (Dec.2006):
6:295. Print.
Thiagarajah, Krisha, and Mohammad R.
Torabi. “Irregular Breakfast Eating and
Associated
Health Behaviors: A Pilot Study Among College Students.” The
Health Educator
(Spring.2009): vol.41, No.1. Print.
Smith, Kylie J, Seana L Gall, Sarah A
McNaughton, Leigh Blizzard, Terence Dwyer,
and Alison J
Venn. “Skipping breakfast: longitudinal associations with
cardiometabolic
risk factors in the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health
Study.” AJCN
(Oct.2010). Print.
Extend Essay2
Safety is Paramount: an Eater’s Manifesto
Love and enjoyment of food always mean the same thing to
me. Safety is paramount before the taste. From
chemical additives in powdered milk to “toxic capsule”, food safety issues have
aroused panic and major concerns about people’s lives and health in China. In
their white paper, Assuring Food Safety
and Quality: Guidelines for Strengthening National Food Control Systems, the
World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
define food safety “as food that is free from all hazards, whether chronic or
acute, that may make food injurious to the health of the consumer”(1). As a
pursuer of a healthy diet, I have always believed that food safety is the foundation
of diet before people can proceed further. In this essay, I will discuss unsafe
food in terms of cooking and eating. I will also provide suggestions for people
to avoid these unsafe foods.
In recent years, news about food safety issues has flooded
the mainstream media. Food is not only a
means to sustain and enjoy life, but also a medium for transmitting hazards,
disease, and death. These diseases are called foodborne illness, or food poisoning. It indicates any
illness that results from eating contaminated food (Hillers 18), such as
botulism caused by improperly canned low-acid food. For
people who always cook at home, Val Hillers provides five suggestions during
cooking in his journal article, “You Can Prevent Foodborne Illness.” These are:
to practice good personal hygiene, to cook foods adequately, to keep foods at a
safe temperature, to pay attention to
easily perishable foods, and to keep separate cooked foods and ready-to-cook
foods.
To begin with,
Hillers suggests that people should practice good personal hygiene during the
cooking process. For instance, before people handle food, it is important to
wash hands with soap and running water. If someone is ill with diarrhea, they
should only prepare food for themselves (6). Secondly, people should cook foods
adequately. As an
illustration, people should “cook fish until flesh is opaque and flakes easily
with a fork” and people should “cook eggs until both the yolk and white are
firm” (7). Moreover, keeping foods at a safe temperature is also important. For
example, all perishable foods should be stored at or below 40 F whereas hot
foods should be kept at or above 140 F (8). People should pay more attention to
foods that are easily perishable, including foods of animal origin and raw
plant foods (18). The fourth suggestion is that people should avoid food and
water from unsafe sources. “Using (Use) water from a safe water supply for
drinking and rinsing fresh produce” is often cited as an example (10). Last but
not least, since people always forget to avoid cross-contamination during the cooking
process, Hillers suggests people should keep separated cooked foods and
ready-to-cook foods, especially for raw meat and seafood (16). However,
these are only the basic things about food safety.
Despite the cooking process at home, there are
still many food safety issues that are hard to avoid and even hard for people
to imagine. Such examples might be given easily. In
Changsha, Hunan Province, more than 286 people show the same symptoms, including
heart palpitations, nausea, and convulsions after a wedding banquet. Doctors at
the No. 3 Xiangya Hospital state that the blamed pork has been contaminated
with stimulant, a steroid that makes pigs grow faster and leaner (Demick
para.3). Since 2008, six children died and more than 300,000 children were
sickened by melamine-tainted baby formula (Para.5). Furthermore, in Shanghai, a
popular brand was using dye to make cheap wheat buns and make them look like
the more expensive black rice buns. In Jiangsu province, farmers state that
their watermelons had exploded "like landmines" after they used too
much growth hormone in order to increase the size of the watermelons (para.13).
All of these cases indicate that bigger,
cheaper, and faster have become the targets of food production. It is
important for people to avoid these illegal additives.
There is a broad consensus that China is the nation in
which people attach the great importance to cooking
and eating. The Chinese government has enacted an ever-more-strict policy to
ensure food safety in 2009. The law focuses on the issue of food additives. It
states that no additives will be allowed in the food production process unless
they can be proven both necessary and safe (Demick para.7). However, food
safety scandals happen every year and become increasingly frequent and bizarre.
Food safety scandals have caused a panic in society. Every time a food safety
scandal happens, it will bring a new and strange term to people. People have a
great mistrust of food production because it is difficult to identify illegal food
additives.
Recalling my own experiences, on one hand, I was forced
to know many new terms, such as Sudan Red1, melamine, and steroid spiked pork,
due to the unscrupulous merchants. I have to ask whether there is really so
much poisonous food; or do we really not have safe food to eat. On the other
hand, the fast pace of life leads to my irregular diet, resulting it is
inevitable for me to intake snack during free time. It is commonly known that
snacks are always combined with a large number of additives and some of these
additives are illegal.
I remember I was particularly keen on jelly when I was in
primary school. I used to taste the different colors of jelly; however, I did
not know they are harmful to brain development until my mom found these words
in its food packaging bag, such as “charming red,” “lemon chrome yellow,” and
“bright blue.” From then on, my mom forbade me to eat any jelly. Another
example is that the director of class forbade us to eat instant noodles before
the graduation examination in junior high school. She said instant noodles are harmful
to students’ brains due to the fact that a packet of instant noodles can contain
up to 25 types of food additives. Common are citric acid and sodium glutamate,
which may lead to low calcium syndrome among students. In general, people who
buy snacks have never seen the list of ingredients in the food packaging bags. Many people are familiar with nutrients in the food additive tables and
used to ignoring some terms they feel strange. They only see the date of
production and prices and they do not know which things they cannot eat.
Michael Pollan
provides a useful suggestion in his essay, Unhappy
Meals. He emphasizes the importance of rejecting food which contains
unfamiliar, unpronounceable, and more than five food additives. “None of these
characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them
are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed” (11). As for
myself, I never paid attention
to food additives before unsafe food news has exposure to society and I once
knew little about the secrets of food additives. However, after I did some
research about different types of food additives, the relationship between some
food and I have changed gradually. As for myself, access to the production process and the
ingredient list of a food help me become a better and healthier eater. I used
to eat snack based on their appealing appearance and delicious taste; however,
now I begin to define and study each snack before I taste them. Changes can be seen
from I would judge whether the food is healthy or not. I would study and
compare the difference of ingredient lists. Some terms of food additives are no
longer strange to me.
For instance, I will not eat food with color additives, flavorings
and sweeteners, and food preservatives. Quinoline yellow, or E104, is a good
example. It is easily found in the ingredient list of soft drinks, sauces,
candies, and ice creams. It is banned in Australia, Japan, Norway and the U.K.
due to leading to potential liver cancer (Gonen 1). Moreover, Sulphur Dioxide,
or E220, can be found in many potato products. Even though it is not banned
anywhere, it will reduce vitamin B1 and cause fetal abnormalities and DNA
damage to the human body (2). Some additives may have
medicinal value but most of them have potential harm. In addition, since dairy
products, edible oils, seasonal foods and alcoholic beverages are among the
major catalog of unsafe foods in China, decreasing the frequency of eating them
and choosing reliable brands are both important for me when I return home.
Moreover, since snack
accounted for the largest intake of additives in daily life, it is essential
for people to decrease the snack eating frequency. Eating an organic breakfast
is a good solution to avoid eating snack. Although
it is widely accepted that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the
study of Krisha Thiagaraja and Mohammad R.Torabi, The Irregular Breakfast Eating and Associated Health Behaviors in 2009,
indicating that nearly one-fifth of young people between 19 and 29 years of age
stated that they never ate breakfast (9). I consider eating organic breakfast
regularly as the most significant food safety promotion strategy because
skipping breakfast is always associated with more snack eating. Compared to regular healthy breakfast
eaters, the logical analysis of Thiagaraja and Torabi show that students who
always skip breakfast are more likely to eat snacks. Their finding indicates
that breakfast skippers will nibble snakes between meals; some others have to
compensate their calories from the non-nutritive beverages. Thus, students with
regular and healthy breakfast eating have a lower risk of illness due to less
snack eating between meals (9). There are a lot of food additives in unhealthy
and non-nutritive snack and beverages; many people eat snack due to their
irregular eating times, thus, eating organic breakfast is a good way to ensure food
safety.
Indeed, I am very envious when I see other food lovers
talk about the importance of a nutritious diet and their delicacy manifesto.
Because it is hard for them to imagine that “What else can I eat” can become a
person’s pet phrases in a country. My cousin is 1 year old now. My sister tries
to stop breastfeeding and decides to feed him formula milk. However, China’s
milk scandal leads her to suspect the quality of milk powder. She asks me to
buy formula milk from the United States and bring it back to China. It is
sorrowful that the food quality, or even children’s food quality cannot be
assured.
Solving food safety
issues that are currently going on is the public polls in China. It should be
taken to survey the broad opinions as to find the solution for food safety
problems. I propose food safety is the foundation of eating because it relates
to the future of a nation. If dairy companies can put poison in baby’s milk and
pharmaceutical factories can recover expired drugs with high price and
reproduced, then all other healthy eating promotion programs and all other
eating recommendations are meaningless. With the rapid economic development in
contemporary China, to ensure food safety is corresponding to sustainable
development in terms of issues about human health.
Overall, rejecting unsafe food
through paying attention to the cooking process, reading the list of
ingredients, and eating breakfast, is my eater’s manifesto in order to pursue a
healthy lifestyle. At least one thing can be determined is that paying
attention to your health is always the best investment.
Work Cited
Assuring food safety and quality: guidelines for
strengthening national food control
systems. Rome, Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and
World Health
Organization, 2003.Print.
Demick, Barbara. “Food safety gives
China a headache.” Chicago Tribune. 2011. Print.
Gonen,
Julia. “Food Additives.” Drjuliagonen. Web. 23.May.2013.
Thiagarajah, Krisha, and Mohammad R. Torabi.
“Irregular Breakfast Eating
and Associated Health
Behaviors: A Pilot Study Among College Students.”
The Health Educator (Spring.2009): vol.41,
No.1. Print.
Pollan, Michael. Michael, Pollan.
"Unhappy Meal." The New York Magazine. 2007.
Print.
Hillers, Val. “You Can Prevent Foodborne Illness.” Pacific Northwest Publications.
April,2009. Print.
