PAC

Priscilla Carlson

English 1106

11/27/07

Persuasion

Watch Your Health

When having five dollars in my pocket where should I spend it? Should I spend it at the grocery store or McDonald’s? At a grocery store I can buy a loaf of bread, some deli meat, and this would last me a week. If I spend this at McDonalds I would just get one meal out of it. One meal only contains a Beverage, one container of fries, and a burger. But if I wanted to save this for another day it would go bad, or the food would get cold, and wouldn’t be good to eat anymore. I have to say that I would have to go for the grocery store. I say this because it would last a week, and probably would be healthier for me too. According to the movie Supersize Me, each day one in four Americans visit a fast food restaurant. This movie tells everyone about fast food. I think every college student should see this movie at least once. I want to help everyone to developed better healthy eating habits.

            Every college student has it hard to pay for food with little money that they have. I know at some fast food restaurants it’s not expensive, and can’t turn it down. I know having errands to do, and need to get something quickly to eat that fast food is the best way to do it. What if you ate fast food for a month? What will happen? According to the movie Morgan Spurlock did all of that. He ate fast food for thirty days. He ate McDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. He had to eat everything on the menu at least once before the experiment was over. In this movie the doctors told him that this may be dangerous to his body. Before this movie began his health was above average. He was 6’2, 185 pounds, and below average of eleven percent of fat. During this experiment he seemed more depressed, and it was hard for him at one moment to finish a meal, but he did eat it. After the experiment was done his health was not the best. His cholesterol passed the 200 by a wide margin, he put on twenty-five pounds, his body fat increased from eleven percent to eighteen percent, and his liver was on a red alert also. It took him a year to go back to his previous weight, and it took him eight weeks for his liver to go back to normal.

            According to the movie, sixty percent of Americans are overweight or obese. One major cause that Americans deal with is Obesity. Obesity is also linked to hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, and etc. This cause is leading to death in
America. I say this fact because Americans are not watching their health, until it’s too late to do something about it. The World of Health Organization has declared that obesity is a global epidemic. During the movie, they mention about diabetes. They mention how one of three children that are born in the year of 2000 will develop diabetes in their life time. Being a diabetic is hard for some people, but that’s how they have to live. The movie also mention that diabetes will cut to seventeen through twenty-seven years off your live. I know you probably think this is not true, but it is. This only follows someone if it’s hard to follow a food routine. If you’re that kind of person it would be hard for you to live life as a diabetic.

            According to the movie, McDonalds feeds more than forty-six million people a day, this is more than the entire population of
Spain. McDonalds represents forty-three percent of total
U.S. fast food market. One fact that I thought was interesting about McDonalds is that two beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun contains two grams of fat. According to the Health Organization site, actually two grams of fat is not the only thing that goes in someone’s body when they eat fast food. What else goes in that person’s body is carbohydrate. Carbohydrate contains four calories, and a gram of protein contains four calories. A gram of fat contains nine calories and more than twice the amount of the other two.

            One bad part about eating healthy there is always a routine that every person follows. Some people like to look at a food label charts to look for some important ingredients that they like to follow. When looking at this chart they look for the calories, cholesterol, sugar, and grams of fat. Doing this takes time and adding it all together. Some people add all these ingredients together to see if they hit under 1000. If they do its healthy, if not they will not eat it. Eating healthy is hard work, but it does take time. Sometimes eating healthy cost a lot of money too. It all depends on what kind of healthy diet you would like to do. It all depends if a person wants to avoid dairy products, avoid meat, or avoid anything with sugar. All the healthy ways to eat does cost money, but that’s the price that everyone has to deal with. If I want to live a life to the fullest I would have to avoid fast food, find a way that I would like to eat, and keep it as a routine for life.

            I think our class should see this movie and discuss because everyone can relate to it in one way or another. I believe this because everyone eats and that’s how we live. I think some of our classmates could learn about some facts that we didn’t know of. I know that not everyone likes documentaries, but we could all learn from this. It could teach us how we can change out eating habits, and eat to a more healthy way. While eating a more healthy way, everyone can see some great effects. Everyone might be able to see that they’re not tired, more energy, and their emotions changed for the better. This is why I think our class should discuss this movie in class, so we can learn to keep our body’s healthy and live life to the healthiest way.