Persuasive Essay On Fast Food

1442 Words3 Pages

My sister is 14 and weighs more than I do. She is on the Varsity soccer team at her high school and gets plenty of exercise, but still struggles with her weight. She doesn’t understand why my clothes don’t fit her quite the same way, or why she looks different in the crop-top shirts that all of her “bean pole” friends wear during the summer. She went through puberty much before all of her friends did and immediately started gaining weight in 8th grade. She eats whatever she wants, whenever she wants and doesn’t consider the amount of calories she consumes in a day. My parents struggle with teaching her what is the right portion for a meal and showing her what is healthier for her to eat. Like most 14 year olds, she wants to eat pizza and sweets …show more content…

Some schools require a health class their freshman year but from my memory, it didn’t teach much about nutrition and better eating habits. It would benefit parents to teach them that healthy things can be delicious and can give them the proper nutrition and energy they need at such a young age. The problem may be that their parents also have bad eating habits and/or choose to pick up easy dinners after work at a fast food place. America is considered to be a “fast” living environment, especially here in California where both parents usually work and by the time they get off in the evening, the last thing they want to do is cook a nutritious meal. By doing this, we are teaching our kids that it is okay to eat poorly and not fuel our bodies with the necessary nutrients we all need. Now I am not saying that all families do this, but the majority of them do. That is why it is becoming such a big issue in America. Another reason children don’t know what to eat is because everything that is unhealthy for you seems to be more advertised than the nutritious food. When you are driving on a freeway and come across a billboard, most of the time it is from a fast food company that wants to make their food look appealing. They place a giant burger on a billboard and it causes the people that see it to want that burger. It is a great way for that company to get business. But how many times do you …show more content…

The American portion size is significantly bigger than other countries around the world. I recently worked at a fine dining steak house that was located near a lot of hotels. Naturally, we received a lot of business from the guests who stayed at the hotels and a lot of times they were foreigners (mainly from Europe). The portion size of the meals we served were rather large and the foreigners would actually get upset and almost offended that I was trying to serve them so much. Any other regular guest that lives in the US was happy to receive so much food and would generally eat it all in one sitting, and then ask for dessert. By doing this, we are showing our children that it is okay to eat absolutely everything on their plate even if it is clearly too much. At home, the child’s parents should be teaching them how to weigh their food and teach them the proper amounts they should be consuming. If you sit down in front of the TV with a giant bag of chips, chances are that you are going to eat way more than one serving purely because you had it in front of you and just kept eating while zoning out watching TV. Its important to show our youth that you should portion out a certain amount of whatever they are eating and then be done with it after that. Our children today tend to snack all day long.

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