America’s weird obsession with gross and unhealthy foods

I have never been much of a “sweet-tooth” kind of person. While people all around me were constantly inundated with all types of sweets, candy and ice-cream, I tended to shy away from all of that. It’s been really starting to get to me lately though and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Of course, I’m not going to turn down the occasional cupcake if offered and yes it does taste ok and even good, but it ends there. Some people I know are going all in for these types of foods. I am really starting to see now that is a weird obsession that people have and I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s our culture. Although, the trend that I’ve noticed lately is that this behavior has been increasing and I’m going to show you why I think that’s the case and what you can do about it.

Deep fried ice cream
A friend of ours recently cooked dinner and then offered us this delightful delicacy. I am not a rude type of person and decided to indulge. It was pretty good, but not incredibly amazing like my friend was trying to sell it. Ice cream in and of itself is good enough and not very healthy to begin with. Adding a special serving of fried material on it is not doing anyone any favors except hastening a trip to the cardiologist.

Deep fried pizza
Consider deep fried pizza. I found out about this heinous concoction from a stand at the local fair. This item is a little different because it surprisingly isn’t chock full of sugar. But does this even sound enticing to anybody? When was the last time you ordered a pizza and when they asked what toppings you wanted you told them to just stick in the deep fryer? Gross!

Chocolate covered bacon
For some reason, bacon has become more popular over the last few years and a lot of people like it. There are all kinds of bacon sold on the market, turkey, smoked, apple-flavored and now chocolate covered. While I enjoy bacon as much as anybody else, let’s just keep it with a side of eggs for breakfast. Stop trying to pour chocolate on everything.

A large soda offered with EVERYTHING
How many times have you been to a restaurant and noticed that everybody is drinking either a large pepsi or coke? Why is that? Soda adds virtually no nutritional value and is merely empty sugars. People are just damaging themselves and for no good reason at that. If you are a soda drinker, stop and think for a minute why you are doing this to yourself. Think about the last time that you were hungry. Did you feel the need to slam a pepsi or coke with your meal? Just by cutting out this simple beverage from our lives, we can drop nearly 7 pounds of fat per year! It is the easiest and simplest life hack towards better health. Consider ordering water with your next meal. It’s free, you’ll have better skin, and your body will function better in general. In addition, many restaurants offer free sparkling water which tastes great.

Back to our roots
See the trend? What is it about foods nowadays where we have to make them unhealthy to be palatable? It probably goes back to our ancestral eating patterns whereas sweet/fatty flavors equaled energy dense foods. When food was scarce, energy dense food was required in order to survive the hardships of prehistoric life. If you take into account the lengthy amount of time attributed to human evolution, the last couple millennia could be considered an evolutionary blink of an eye. Many of our ancestors’ long held eating habits and behavior patterns have held over from those long forgotten time periods. This comes into direct conflict now with our more modern and comfortable way of life. The current skyrocketing trends of diabetes and heart disease can attest to this. Couple this with a couple centuries old tradition of pies, cakes and ice cream throughout western culture and you have a recipe for disaster.

The fed-up documentary on sugary foods is an excellent watch and really opened my eyes to this problem that society is currently facing,

The current day
This current day of history is an anomaly. With the rise of the internet we are witnessing a great fusion of ideas, cultures, and views. In this peculiar environment, we now have to be over the top and inventive just to get anybody to pay attention. That’s true while writing steemit articles and it’s true in just about every other aspect of advertising including food choices. That’s where chocolate covered bacon comes in. The challenge then is to not fall victim to the hype. When someone offers you a weird and unhealthy food it’s a certain form of marketing. If you can see past all of the sugary glaze and why you feel like eating it, then you are in a better position to either refuse or replace that dessert with a healthier option such as fruit.

A personal challenge
I challenge you now to think clearly about the subject while you’re away from the instigator food itself. Think deeply about the issue right now. Think of this as training in a controlled environment. With everything that’s been discussed so far, you now have the tools to make an informed decision on why you’re being offered this food and why you might feel tempted to give in. You also have some options as far as alternative choices to eating the unhealthy item. You are not a slave to your biological impulses. As a human being we have the power of free will. Right now is the time when you can leverage that free will more effectively and use it to your advantage. Remember, I’m assuming that you are not in the immediate vicinity of any type of junk food (at least it’s not being offered to you at the same moment you’re reading this article.) That’s why you can make the choice now to choose the path of discipline.

The power of choice
When you think about a certain issue ahead of time, you’re activing a feedback loop in your mind. If you can consciously make a choice about a certain problem in advance, you are able to develop plans to dictate your actions when the time comes. Those plans are further broken down into actual concrete steps to guide you in the right direction. For example, you can say to yourself, “If someone offers me the pie, I will not eat it.” That is an example of a plan of action. Also, you can then plan some actual steps you will take to make sure that you are successful in your plan, “When offered, I will politely refuse, rotate my body 180 degrees and look for an apple.” Since you have previously thought about the subject when you were in a moment of clear mindedness, you have come to the right decision on your own accord and were not distracted by hunger or any other type of external pressures. This applies not only to proper eating, but also to many other possible areas of one’s life.

A promising solution to the problem
If more people could realize that this is not just about fun and indulging a little bit here and there, we could overcome sales of unhealthy food and culture would begin to dictate healthier food options being marketed to us. People need to be more thoughtful in their approach to aspects of their life including food choices. If we could adopt these strategies of clear-mindedness and prioritize the principles of free will over biological impulses we could start making progress towards a healthier society.

#health #fitness #life #food